Today, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a class-action lawsuit alleging that Wal-Mart discriminated against potentially one million female employees. The long-running case, originally filed in 2001, had contended that female employees were discriminated against in the workplace by local managers who had made "subjective decisions about pay and promotions," reported Bloomberg. The workers appeared to be hoping for a huge settlement from Wal-Mart.

But they didn't get it: the Justices sided with Wal-Mart's argument that, as The New York Times wrote last year, its employees were too spread out among thousands of stores and over a hundred different types of job classifications. Which means that they couldn't "possibly have enough in common to make class-action treatment appropriate." Now, "the handful of women who brought the lawsuit may pursue their claims on their own, with much less money at stake and less pressure on Wal-Mart to settle," the Associated Press wrote. Other corporations, however, will presumably elicit a sigh of relief at a ruling which appears to limit the scope of class-action lawsuits.

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Erik Hayden