Wal-Mart appeals to Supreme Court in bias case

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block female employees from suing on behalf of as many as 1.5 million women in what would be the largest gender-bias suit against a private employer in U.S. history.

The world's largest retailer Wednesday appealed a 6-5 lower court decision allowing women who have worked for Wal-Mart since 2001 to be part of a single class-action lawsuit. The justices likely will say later this year whether they will hear the case.

Saying the workers are seeking billions of dollars in back pay, Wal-Mart told the justices the claims of workers around the country were too diverse to proceed as a single case under the rules governing federal lawsuits.

"The class is larger than the active-duty personnel in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard combined -- making it the largest employment class action in history by several orders of magnitude," argued the Bentonville, Ark.-based company, the largest U.S. private employer.

Wal-Mart is accused of paying women less than men for the same jobs and giving females fewer promotions. The suit was filed in 2001 by six women.

"The ruling upholding the class in this case is well within the mainstream that courts at all levels have recognized for decades," Brad Seligman, an attorney for the workers, said in an e-mailed statement. "Only the size of the case is unusual, and that is a product of Wal-Mart's size and the breadth of the discrimination we documented."

The company says that no pay disparity exists between men and women at most of its stores and that managers make subjective salary and promotion decisions at the store level.