Monday’s Supreme Court decision on the discrimination suit against Wal-Mart was a takedown of the overzealous trial lawyers looking to profit from a case that had not shown that it should be tried as a class action suit. The case hinged on whether or not the women claiming discrimination could be counted as a class. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that they could. In its own 5–4 ruling, the Supreme Court found that “the plaintiffs failed to provide proof of a common companywide policy of discrimination, which [Justice Scalia] said is necessary to certify a class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(2),” according to Tony Mauro at The National Law Journal.
That four of the nine Supreme Court justices wanted to send the case back to the über-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is more evidence that the Supreme Court must be protected from another appointment by President Obama. Both of his Supreme Court appointees, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, fell in line for the trial lawyers. Adding another liberal-appointed judge would tip the scales in favor of those justices who seek to misinterpret the Constitution to further a radical agenda. For an example of what that means for conservative Americans, take Justice Stephen Breyer’s question in a Fox News interview, in reference to the Second Amendment rights of the citizens of Washington, D.C.: “Are you a sportsman; do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland.” That comes from a man tasked with protecting Americans from abuses of the government’s constitutional limitations.
The dissenting liberal justices supported a theory that, as Cato Institute’s Walter Olson writes, “Wal-Mart’s corporate non-policy—that is, its decision not to micromanage its local executives on personnel choices—would wind up being legally interpreted as amounting to an affirmative centralized decision to discriminate.” Olson continues, “it’s not—and we should be glad lawyers at every big company aren’t yet insisting that every local HR decision be sent to a distant headquarters for fear of liability.”
As Larry Kudlow says in the video below, there will be less money for the class action trial lawyers to donate to the Democratic Party, which explains why liberals are dead set against this ruling.
In November of last year, on these pages, Justice Anthony Kennedy was named The Most Important Person in America. Kennedy is the Supreme Court’s frequent swing vote, and is aged 74. At his seasoned age, Justice Kennedy may choose to retire, or unfortunately expire, within the next presidential term. Allowing President Obama to fill the swing vote seat on the court with a liberal justice in the mold of Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan would lead to a constitutional catastrophe.
