{"id":4426,"date":"2011-03-28T05:40:35","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T12:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=4426"},"modified":"2011-03-28T05:40:35","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T12:40:35","slug":"scotus-to-hear-wal-mart-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/28\/scotus-to-hear-wal-mart-case\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS to Hear Wal-Mart Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is not a very important decision on it\u2019s face.  The matter that Wal-mart routinely discriminates against female employees is very important, but the issue before the Court is narrow and technical.  That begs the question of why I am covering it, if it\u2019s a yawner.  May I remind you, that the issue before the Court in Citizens United<\/em> was narrow and technical too, but the extreme Republican activists that dominate SCOTUS blew it up into the most anti-Constitutional decision since Dred Scott<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"SCOTUS4\"When the Supreme Court considers on Tuesday whether hundreds of thousands of women can band together in an employment discrimination suit against Wal-Mart, the argument may hinge on the validity of the hotly disputed conclusions of a Chicago sociologist.<\/p>\n

An analysis from Prof. William T. Bielby, a sociologist, is at the heart of a case that the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Plaintiffs in the class-action suit, who claim that Wal-Mart owes billions of dollars to as many as 1.5 million women who they say were unfairly treated on pay and promotions<\/strong>, enlisted the support of William T. Bielby, an academic specializing in \u201csocial framework analysis.\u201d <\/p>\n

A central question in the case is whether he should have been allowed, in preliminary proceedings, to go beyond describing general research about gender stereotypes in the workplace to draw specific conclusions about what he called flaws in Wal-Mart\u2019s personnel policies. <\/p>\n

\u201cBielby made a conclusion that he had no basis to make,\u201d said Laurens Walker, one of two University of Virginia professors who coined the term for the analysis almost 25 years ago. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t done the research.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"28Walfart\"But a brief<\/a> supporting the plaintiffs from the American Sociological Association said that Professor Bielby\u2019s work explaining how Wal-Mart\u2019s policies may have led to discrimination \u201cis well within our discipline\u2019s accepted methods.\u201d <\/p>\n

The sharp arguments are a testament to the central role that social framework analysis has come to play in scores of major employment discrimination cases. Describing what was at stake in such cases, a 2009 article<\/a> in The Fordham Law Review defending Professor Bielby said the debate was \u201cabout the existence of unconscious or implicit bias, the continued seriousness of discrimination as a force in the modern workplace and the appropriate reach of legal remedies to challenge discrimination.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Supreme Court is not considering whether Wal-Mart, the country\u2019s largest retailer and biggest private employer, in fact discriminated against women who worked there<\/strong>. For now, the question before the justices in the case, Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, No. 10-277, is only whether hundreds of thousands of female workers have enough in common to join together in a single suit\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Thanks to Nameless for the link to the top graphic.<\/font><\/p>\n

First, note that there always \u201cexperts\u201d with impressive bona-fides, welling to whore their academic standing to support the a Republican position.<\/font><\/p>\n

Second and more important, if SCOTUS does here what they did in Citizens United<\/em>, they will decide far more than the narrow issue before them and legalize discrimination against Women.  Mind you, I am not predicting that they will, only that they can, and with with Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas on the bench, the risk is very real.  Republicans cannot be permitted to appoint another Justice.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not a very important decision on it\u2019s face.  The matter that Wal-mart routinely discriminates against female employees is very important, but the issue before the Court is narrow and technical.  That begs the question of why I am covering it, if it\u2019s a yawner.  May I remind you, that the issue before the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}