What Wal-Mart And Chief Justice John Roberts Don't Seem To Get About Discrimination | The New Republic

But gender discrimination is still the core substantive issue in the case. That became clear during oral arguments, when Wal-Mart’s lawyer, Theodore Boutros, denied claims that pervasive discrimination exist in Wal-Mart’s hiring and employment practices. As proof, he pointed to the company’s explicitly anti-discrimination policies. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t appear persuaded. When “the company gets reports month after month showing that women are disproportionately passed over for promotion,” she probed, “and there is a pay gap between men and women doing the same job. … Isn’t there some responsibility on the company to say, is gender discrimination at work, and if it is, isn’t there an obligation to stop it?” Boutros deflected the questions by calling the plaintiff’s statistical analysis into question, but he did not deny the point.