The Discrimination - Assignment Example

Discrimination is a very sensitive issue that has been fought about and argued upon for a long time. However, the outlook of people towards this matter has undergone a certain amount of change since the historic times. During the colonial period, the British had laid a vast amount of emphasis on the whites being superior to people belonging to any other skin colour or race and even on differences between gender, among other things. Discrimination still takes place in the modern day and age even though people might say that they have evolved from the past and understood what it is like to be on the side that is being discriminated against.

One such case took place very recently and is called Dukes vs. Walmart. In this case, a gender discrimination lawsuit has been filed against the retail giant by women who have claimed that the company has not been treating them well and has been discriminating against them with respect to perks and other opportunities to grow and develop. Most of the women involved in the case have been working with the company since the year 1998. This case has become very renowned recently and this paper helps to provide insight regarding the case summary and the decisions that were taken in order to stop the discrimination from taking place.

The lawsuit first started in the year 2000 as a woman by the name of Betty Dukes alleged that even though she had excellent reviews from the company, she failed to be promoted despite working with the company for over a period of six years. In turn, Walmart stated that the reason she was not being promoted was that she would return late from her lunch breaks on a frequent basis. As Dukes refused to back down and filed a lawsuit, the case has today reached over 1.5 million plaintiffs looking for respite from the company and alleging that it has been discriminating against women. The only reason that the Judge went ahead with the case was because of the large statistics or the number of women that had signed up on the plaintiff’s side, supporting Duke's allegory and claiming that the same had happened to them as well.

However, Wal-Mart appealed immediately, claiming that women could not possibly have enough in common with each other to form a legally recognizable class: The plaintiffs in the case, said U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, “have little in common but their sex and this lawsuit.” (Doyle, Sady) This very case has been regarded as the largest civil rights case in the history of the United States of America because of the sheer large number of women that got together in order to back it up. However, as the final verdict was given on June 20, 2011, the Supreme Court ruled the case in the favour of the defendant, Wal-Mart by saying that the plaintiffs or the 1.5 million women that had come together, did not have enough in common to be able to constitute a class case.

All that the women had in common with each other was the fact that they were all females and wanted to join the lawsuit against the opinion of being sexually discriminated against. The case reached the ears of almost the entire globe as a book was also published on the same by Liza Featherstone, the title of “Selling Women Short”.

In conclusion, even though Dukes v. Wal-Mart came to be known as one of the biggest civil rights cases in history with respect to gender discrimination, it did not see itself winning in the favour of the plaintiffs because of lack of support or evidence of all the women having commonalities enough to constitute a class act.