A Group of Women Suing Microsoft Have to Beat Supreme Court Precedent
A Microsoft engineer, hoping to bring a lawsuit against the tech behemoth on the behalf of approximately 8,000 female employees, will have the 2011 Supreme Court case Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes to contend with as precedent against filing suit using class-action status. A female engineer was given a lower performance ranking, despite being told she had an outstanding year deserving of a higher performance rating, due to company policy that caps top rankings. In addition, she was passed over for promotion in favor of less qualified men and was paid less than her male peers; overall, women at Microsoft earn a “significant” 8.6 percent less than men. The Walmart case in 2011 had ruled that there wasn’t enough “commonality” among plaintiffs being evaluated by thousands of managers to justify a class; the Microsoft plaintiffs believed that the forced ranking system made it an issue of corporate culture. While a U.S. District judge ruled in favor of Microsoft in July, due to the Walmart precedent, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has agreed to review the case.
See "A Group of Women Suing Microsoft Have to Beat Supreme Court Precedent", Joe Nocera, Bloomberg Businessweek, October 5, 2018