Legal Blog: Florida Woman Fights Discrimination

Wal-Mart has, unsurprisingly, been the target of more lawsuits that one can count over the years. The company’s treatment of it workers and “save money at all costs” mentality has resulted in a flood of legal challenges ranging from single plaintiff suits to multi-million dollar class actions. Dukes v. Wal-Mart is of course one large example (the largest class action in American history, actually), as are the myriad wage/hour/overtime class actions the company faces.

Just as important as those large class actions, however, are the countless suits filed by individual plaintiffs – the tiny David trying to win justice over Wal-Mart’s Goliath. We at Wal-Mart Watch will be focusing on one of these stories each week, highlighting those cases that warrant further attention because of the light each sheds in its own way on how Wal-Mart does business.

Tenna Hopkins

Tenna Hopkins was hired by Wal-Mart as an associate way back in 1984 – the year the Russians and others boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles;” the year the Space Shuttle Discovery made its inaugural flight; the year the first Apple Macintosh went on sale. On August 21, 2006, 22 years later, Tenna Hopkins was a store manager at a Wal-Mart Store in Daytona Beach, Florida. On August 22, 2006, Tenna Hopkins was out of a job.

It was alleged, by Wal-Mart, that Ms. Hopkins was fired for “falsifying a grass roots survey.” That, at least, is what they claimed.

Ms. Hopkins, however, has a different story. Prior to her termination, Ms. Hopkins made an interesting discovery – most notably that her supervisor was meeting with other MALE store managers at male-oriented establishments. We won’t go into the explicit details, but let’s just say these meetings occurred at establishments where a female taking off her clothing was a regular occurrence. Ok, ok, they were strip clubs. Regardless, these work meetings took place during store hours, when the male store managers were scheduled to be working in-store, and included discussion of store business to the exclusion of Ms. Hopkins.

Ms. Hopkins notified Wal-Mart of the meetings, stating her belief that they were discriminating against females by excluding them from store meetings and by forcing them to work longer to cover up for the missing male store managers.

After disclosing the meetings, Ms. Hopkin’s supervisor became hostile towards her in his behavior. Ms. Hopkins, who had worked her way up to store manager after 22 years of service to the company, was fired not long after the word “discrimination” had left her lips. One worrying aspect of this complaint is that unfortunately, it isn’t unique. Story after story in Dukes v. Wal-Mart describes male managers taking their meetings to strip clubs or Hooters, establishments that could be deemed at the very least objectionable to women, and at worst downright offensive.

Ms. Hopkins case was initially filed last October in Orlando, and remains with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. You can find the complaint here, and the case schedule here.

Posted by Corey Himrod on Friday, June 13, 2008

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