This case was a United States Supreme Court case in which a group of an estimated amount of roughly 1.5 million women could not be certified as a valid group of plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit for employee discrimination against Walmart. Betty Dukes was a 54-year-old Walmart worker in California who claimed sex discrimination at Walmart. Dukes received positive performance views and worked at the same company for 6 years, but was still denied the training she needed for higher pay. Walmart claimed that they would provide the training because of some of her behavior, including coming back from lunch late. On February 6 in 2007, a 3 judge panel of the Ninth Circuit declared the district court's class certification. Later that year on December 11, 2007, the same Ninth Circuit panel withdrew its initial opinion and issued a subsequent, superseding opinion, which still authorized the class certification. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has three times upheld the class certification.

1945

During this time period, there was a shortage of men in jobs due to men going to fight in world war II, because of this women started to join the workforce and eventually made up to 37% of the civilian workforce. During this time of women in civilian work, women were also getting paid less for their work. Because of this men started to fear that women would start to be employed more because they were doing the same labor for less. With this, Congress introduced the women's equal pay act. Instead of promising equal pay, this act offered the same pay for comparable work in the employers' eyes. The women's equal pay act did not go through.

Eventually, as men started to come home and women started becoming employed less and less. Different jobs were offered to women and women in the workplace dropped down to less than 28% and we were back where we started.

1960

By this time women were paid 2 thirds less than their male counterparts even though there were about 25 million women who were working outside of their homes.

1961

In 1961 Esther Peterson was designated as the head of the Women's Bureau for the department of labor. During this time Esther focused on gender labor laws and persuaded people to aid her in the fight to bring equal pay to congress. Among the woman who aided in Esthers fight for equal pay was Kathrine st. George, Edith Green, and Elanor Roosevelt

1963

Esther presented her first draft of the equal pay act on behalf of the Kennedy administration. The bill was eventually moved forward with much resistance and obstruction. However, after some time it was passed as an amendment under the Fair Labor Acts.