1. Why does Walmart prefer to recruit new store managers from its large pool of hourly associates? While opposition groups present low-grade image challenges for Walmart, the retailer is facing the mother of all human-resource-related threats in the form of Dukes v. Walmart, a $500-billion-dollar discrimination lawsuit billed as the largest class action civil rights lawsuit in history.

The Dukes case began back in 2000 when California Walmart associate Betty Dukes complained that she was unfairly reprimanded and denied opportunities to advance in the company. Although Walmart reports that Ms.

Dukes clashed with her female supervisor and was appropriately disciplined for violating lunch-break policies, five women joined the Dukes lawsuit in 2001 alleging a pattern of gender discrimination by the company. The local incident, which initially posed a potential risk of millions of dollars in compensatory damages, morphed into a multibillion dollar lawsuit overnight when a district judge gave the Dukes case “class action” status—a certification upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010. As a result of the class action designation, Dukes v. Walmart is now a national lawsuit representing over 1.6 million female workers going back to 1998, none of whom have individual discrimination complaints against the company.