the issue now is whether other women employees, past and present, can join what would then become the largest classes action employment suit in u.s. history. walmart, america s largest private employer says no, the classes would be too big, the plaintiffs too dissimilar, the issues too many to litigate. the plaintiffs say walmart wants a big company exception to the civil rights laws. two lower courts ruled the class and the case can go foird. that brings us to the supreme court where we now have three women justices, the most ever, and we want to talk about this with cnn senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin. he joins us from our d.c. studios. jeff, you told me yesterday that you didn t think justices ginsberg, sotomayor and kagan will cut the walmart women any slack. do you feel the same way? reporter: after listening to the argument this morning, my inclination is to think that ginsburg, sotomayor and kagan may well vote for the women plaintiffs in that case, but it s likely to me,
remember too too big to fail, the rationale for bailing out wall street at the start of the great recession? of course you do. now comes the hotly debated legal premise, too big to sue. that s at the heart of a case that was argued today at the highest court in the land, a case that by any standard is huge. it dates back a decade. six women who worked for walmart claimed they didn t get the same pay and opportunities that the men did. the issue now is whether other women employees, past and present, can join what would then become the largest class action employment suit in u.s. history. walmart, america s largest private employer, says, no, the class would be too big, the plaintiffs too dissimilar, the issues too many to litigate. the plaintiffs say walmart wants a big company exception to civil rights 0 law. two lower federal courts have ruled the class and case can go forward. that brings us to the supreme court where we now have three women justices, the most ever. cnn s kate boldu
jenna: thanks. gregg: this could be the largest class action discrimination lawsuit in american history as women employees take on walmart, the world s biggest retailers. but they ve got a pretty high hurdle to clear. will the u.s. supreme court let this case go forward? jenna: a busy day at the supreme court taking a look at that line. as calls go for the 4 libyan leader to step down his closes advisers aren t sure if qaddhafi can hang onto power. what his inner circle is saying to fox, we re live with that story. jenna: a woman nearly buried alive in her own backyard when he fell into a giant sinkhole that swallowed her up. i go inside the house, i hear carla screaming. i followed her scream, i opened the sliding glass door, i look to the left and sure enough i see her fingertips and screaming
legalese. what s being claimed here is that women were discriminated against with comparison to men in all the walmart stores across the country, all the women employees, since 1998. it s over 1 million women. and the question here in this case is and it s limited to this, whether these six women who were actually in this suit, whether they re typical enough of what s been happening across the country to all these other million women employed by walmart that a decision that there was discrimination as to these six women, whether that could be fairly applied to all the other women, or whether there is a lot of individual issues and they all stand differently and they should all be tried individually. so the big important thing that s being determined here is how easily can these class action suits, where lots of people are gathered together under one umbrella, how easily they can go forward against big
basis. in order to channel procreation. they say if you go around making changes to the institution, who knows what could happen. they say california shouldn t be required to make sudden changes. real quickly, i want to talk to you about walmart hean the issue it has going before the supreme court. agreeing to consider the challenge to a major class action wall strut. general electric is among the companies that supported their petition on this. explain to walmart defense to us, pete. well, this is not the question of whether walmart did or did not discriminate against the women employees. that case was on its way to go to trial. and walmart said, wait a minute. this is huge. this is more class members than all of the american armed force in active duty. this is potentially a million and a half women who work for