Tuesday was a good day for Walmart, but a bad day for the female employees they are notorious for having abused. A total of 1.5 million women are accusing the company of employment discrimination, but Walmart has contended that individually, they do not have enough in common to combine forces for a viable class action lawsuit. So, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from both parties to decide whether or not that is indeed true.

The plaintiffs have two things going against them: 1) their case is being held in the ultra-conservative Roberts court, which has ruled for business interests 61% of the time, and 2) much of their argument is supported by “social framework analysis,” a relatively new branch of sociology, that isn’t being taken seriously by everyone because of its lack of concrete statistics. As Chris Cassidy at Ms. Magazine writes, it was no surprise that on Tuesday, “the case went really, really badly.” [Read more...]