The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal in the biggest employment discrimination case on record, one claiming that Wal-Mart discriminated against hundreds of thousands of women in pay and promotion. The lawsuit seeks back pay that could amount to billions of dollars.

The question before the court is whether claims by individual employees may be combined as a class action. A decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of other class action suits. If nothing else, many pending class actions will slow or stop while litigants and courts await the decision in the case.

Wal-Mart objects to the class action in part because the number of potential claimants would be so large. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that the size of the class is inevitable because Wal-Mart is such a huge company, and is anyway legally irrelevant.

Read more of the New York Times article.

Source: New York Times
Photo: Library of Congress