Judge Jamal Whitehead, who was nominated by President Biden to the federal district court in the Western District of Washington, ruled that three female Amazon workers can proceed with a class action charging the company with sex discrimination, and rejected a motion to dismiss the case. The December 2024 decision was in Wilmuth v Amaxon.Com Inc.
What happened in this case?
Dr. Caroling Wilmuth, Katherine Schomer, and Erin Combs have worked for Amazon in management positions for three years or more. After raising concerns internally without results, they filed a class action against Amazon in November 2023, contending that Amazon “underpays and discriminates against its female employees on a systemic scale.” They also brought individual claims concerning retaliation and medical leave.
The complaint includes “detailed allegations” maintaining that Amazon “systematically” pays female workers “lower compensation” than men performing “substantially equal or similar work,” violating the federal Equal Pay Act and state law. It describes Amazon’s alleged use of uniform job levels, job codes and other processes that are utilized to “systematically pay women less than men for performing the same or substantially similar work.” For example, the complaint describes how Amazon allegedly assigned researcher Katherine Schomer different job codes than males performing equivalent work, resulting in Amazon “paying her male comparator approximately 150 percent of her salary.”
Amazon moved to strike or dismiss the claims against it. The corporation asserted that the proposed class of “all women” who have worked in “covered positions” is “too broad and unwieldy” to sustain a class action and that the individual charges “fail to state a claim” for proper relief. Judge Whitehead carefully considered all the arguments and the entire record before rendering a decision.
How did Judge Whitehead rule and why is it important?
Judge Whitehead ruled that there was no proper basis to strike or dismiss the case against Amazon based on “the pleadings alone” as Amazon claimed and that the complaint should go forward, at least to provide “some opportunity for discovery.”
In accord with applicable precedent, Judge Whitehead continued, a court “may not resolve disputed factual or legal issues” in deciding a motion to strike or dismiss a complaint, and when a defendant tries to strike class action allegations, the company “’properly’ bears the ‘burden of proving that the class is not certifiable.” As he explained, however, Amazon had “failed” to show that the class could not be certified, particularly since several other district courts had recently certified class actions against other corporations based on similar factual and legal contentions. “At this early stage in the case,” the judge concluded, he is required to “accept the facts as pled” in the complaint, and dismissal or striking of the complaint as to the class action allegations would be improper.
Judge Whithead’s opinion is obviously important to Dr. Caroling Wilmuth, Katherine Schomer, and Erin Combs and the mny other female employees of Amazon who seek justice from the corporation for its alleged violations of federal and state equal pay law. It may also be significant in other equal pay and sex discrimination cases in the Ninth Circuit, which includes Oregon, California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington. In addition, the decision serves as a reminder of the importance of confirming fair-minded judges to our federal courts.