WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court suggested Tuesday it may shield Walmart Stores from a gender-bias lawsuit on behalf of potentially one million female workers. The case also may lead to tighter restrictions on class-action suits.

Hearing arguments in Washington, the justices gave a generally receptive audience to the world’s largest employer, which argued that claims by workers around the country are too varied to proceed as a single lawsuit. The class action, approved by a federal appeals court, would be the largest-ever job-bias case against a private employer.

Tuesday’s arguments suggested the court might divide roughly along gender lines itself, with the three female justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – emerging as perhaps the strongest supporters of the class action. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito voiced skepticism.

“Your complaint faces in two directions,” Kennedy, often the court’s swing vote, told the workers’ lawyers. “You said this is a culture where Arkansas knows, the headquarters knows, everything that’s going on. Then in the next breath you say, well, now these supervisors have too much discretion. It seems to me there’s an inconsistency there, and I’m just not sure what the unlawful policy is.”

The case marks the court’s first look in a dozen years at the standards for certifying a class action. Worker advocates say a victory for Walmart, based in Bentonville, Ark., would crush efforts to force change at companies steeped in bias. Corporate groups say a ruling allowing the suit might unleash a wave of employment, antitrust and product-liability suits.

The disagreement among the justices focused as much on the substance of the federal job-discrimination laws as on the requirements for class actions. Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan all suggested that Walmart might not have done enough to stop local managers from using gender to make decisions about pay and promotions.

“Isn’t there some responsibility on the company to say, ‘Is gender discrimination at work?’ and if it is, isn’t there an obligation to stop it?” Ginsburg asked.

The case may be the most closely watched of the court’s nine-month term. Members of the public, including relatives of some of the alleged victims, began standing in line as early as 2 a.m. to claim a seat inside the courtroom. By 6 a.m., dozens of people were in line.

The case threatens Walmart with billions of dollars in damages. Filed in 2001, the suit aims to cover every woman who worked at Walmart and Sam’s Club’s stores at any point since December 1998.

More than 100 Walmart employees have filed sworn statements saying they were paid less and given fewer opportunities for promotion than male colleagues. Six women are aiming to serve as class representatives, including Betty Dukes, a greeter in Walmart’s Pittsburg, Calif., store.

Their lawyers blame a corporate culture they say gives local managers too much leeway to make subjective decisions.

Managers had “unchecked discretion,” which they “used to pay women less than men who were doing the same work in the same facility at the same time,” said Joseph Sellers, the lawyer for the women.

Walmart says that, at the time a federal trial judge approved the class action, the company’s hourly employees worked in 53 departments and with 170 job classifications. The company had divided its retail operations into 41 regions, each with its own vice president, and had 3,400 stores, each with a manager who was afforded significant discretion in making pay and promotion decisions.

More than 20 companies are supporting Walmart at the high court, including Intel Corp., Altria Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Microsoft Corp. and General Electric Co.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco said the class action could proceed on behalf of women who were working when the lawsuit was filed.

 

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