The Sleeker Sex

And Basic Points of Agreement.

Conservatives and Liberals (self-described) if they disagree on 'choice' can at least agree
that the Hyde Amendment restricts federal funding such that everyone (the public) pays for other people's abortions. Even if you think they should be permitted, you think that you should not have to pay for someone else's abortion-nor should anyone. Like there is not anything better this heavily indebted government should be doing with the money. Common Ground there.

In the Title VII arena there should not be any disagreement between conservatives and liberals on the basic principle that males and females, if they do exactly the same job for the same numbers of hours should get the same pay. This is not always what operates in the minds of some unfair chauvinists- because they want to factor into the equation things like-hey, the guy is supporting a wife who is at home with three toddlers so he should get more. The fallacy in this sort of 'needs based' reasoning is that -Hey (dude) you have no idea what the women is supporting with her meager salary- She may be supporting an elderly widowed mother if she isn't divorced herself with kids (half the marriages end in divorce), or an entire parish load of priests, or her nieces and nephews whose father just ran off with the secretary, medical bills for relatives or themselves, etc....You have no idea. No one has to append their 'needs criteria" an itemized list of everything that they spend their money on in salary increase evaluations. Yet, this unstated bias operates in awarding males more money -by the traditionalists who view family as a guy supporting a stay at home woman with kids- to males for the exact same job. It is still widely statistically true that women get short changed by an enormous amount.

Wall Mart was sued in the largest gender discrimination class action to hit the Supreme Court-and it will be up to three women and six men how to decide this. Alito, you will recall thought that working at Goodyear Tires was psychic wage enough apparently in ruling in a matter that resulted in an entire statute being written and signed by Obama to correct it. So count him on the side of Wall Mart without even asking. Depending on the facts, it isn't an automatic gimme that all the women are going to be sympathetic to the Wall Mart ladies and women sometimes are the hardest on other women- but my guess is that they will want to set the record straight to make a significant point for all corporations regarding their practices to put an end once and for all to the double standards.

There are six Roman Catholic Judges and five (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy) of them are men. With the exception of Kennedy they tend to veer toward conservative republican catholic values (the understatement of all the centuries since the Renaissance.) But Chief Justice Roberts has a working professional wife who is a Georgetown Law graduate and a partner in a major DC law firm who is not a typical stay at home mom. I give the family a lot of credit because as a 'pro-life' leader, she walked the talk by adopting children- something that should be encouraged highly by people who want people to deliver babies rather than abort them.

If the Court thinks it wise to grant more ability to adopt children they should want more single women to be able to do it (having a faithful loving husband being outside many of their control)- and so it should become even more obvious to the Court that a policy that strengthens the rights of women and equalizes their pay status, hiring, retention and promotion status is something that encourages stable families, single mother adoptions and is generally good for society at large. The current judgment against Wall Mart may or may not cause such a significant bottom line bruising that it puts them out of business-I don't know-didn't crunch any numbers there but it seems crushing to margins of profitability. So it might be sent back for a modification to a lower court for other findings- But on principle, yes, women should get the exact same opportunities as men in comparable positions- and it is none of Wall Mart's business what they do with their money. It would be wonderful if the Court could put their collective foot down on the historic undervaluation of women's work in the world. We should all be able to agree on that.

CLARIFICATION
The issue has to do with not a standard question of whether the court is going to affirm or turn over a monetary judgment but it is a class certification question involving whether all those women can be lumped together in one suit to begin with. If they lose they can be individual plainitffs or in a multiplaintiff suit- class actions are a different beast and certification criteria have to be met-like numerosity (in this case easy), commonality and typicality of claims. That is where it is more difficult to process in an employment context, because people don't get promoted for a variety of different reasons and they get terminated for a variety of reasons-so the initial certification issue, which comes after a lot of discovery to find supporting facts, seeks to find a main point of commonality rendering all those in the purported class typical of the experience. Like some corporate policy or practice -either systemically provable or overtly stated somewhere (not likely because they are not idiots, while candid emails can slip reams of sexist comments supporting this.)--
Punitive damages or multipliers cannot be so extreme that they completely bankrupt a company or it defeats the social purpose and utility of punishment in punitive damages. It is not
meant to be a corporate death penalty for punishment. In the corporate world there is a stated policy against financial death penalties.
So to clarify/correct the above-there is no 'judgment ' they are yet dealing with-but a certification granting would be immediate settlement time, or posture a trial that is reported to be in the billion range. What's a billion or two for Walmart?