Betty vs. Goliath

The plaintiff Betty Dukes.

In 2011, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the largest class action case ever. Betty Dukes vs. Walmart was about gender discrimination and the nation's largest employer. More than a million of Walmart employees, all women, had sued, and in 2011 the case was about to go before the United States Supreme Court. The issue was not the discrimination itself, but whether a lawsuit like this could be brought in the first place. Dan Rather talked to Betty Dukes, the 61-year-old Walmart employee, and Brad Seligman, the lead attorney for the Dukes case. He also sat with two lawyers on both sides of the issue: Joe Whatley, a civil rights lawyer who supported the women suing Walmart, and Jonathan Cohen, a partner in a prominent international law firm, Sidley Austin.

The Supreme Court eventually ruled that more than a million women were too broad a category to qualify as a class. In 2013, Rather followed up on the story, looking at the losers, those who do not have the means to take on a big corporation alone. In 2008 he had also looked at Walmart's lobbying efforts at the Capitol.