Judge grants class-action in Wal-Mart contraceptive suit

ATLANTA - A federal judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit that claims Wal-Mart&#39;s denial of health insurance coverage for birth control is unfair to women employees. <br> <br> U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes said Friday that all women employed by the nation&#39;s largest retailer after March 2001 can pursue claims against the company if they were using prescription contraceptives. <br> <br> Lisa Smith Mauldin, a customer-service manager at a Wal-Mart store in Hiram, filed the suit Oct. 16 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. <br> <br> Atlanta lawyer George Stein, who represents Mauldin, called Carnes&#39; ruling ``a major victory for the working women of America.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> ``A lot of working women in this country are single and have children and have to pinch their pennies to make ends meet,&#39;&#39; Stein said. <br> <br> Mark Casciari, a lawyer for Wal-Mart, noted that Carnes has yet to address the merits of the lawsuit. The judge also declined to include male Wal-Mart employees whose spouses use birth control. <br> <br> ``For that reason, I don&#39;t see this as a major victory for anybody,&#39;&#39; Casciari told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. <br> <br> The company is reviewing the ruling and hasn&#39;t decided whether to appeal, Wal-Mart spokesman Bill Wertz said Saturday. <br> <br> Mauldin, who earns about $12 an hour, has worked for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart since 1996. She has been eligible for employee health insurance since she started working full-time in March 2000, according to the Washington-based National Women&#39;s Law Center, which filed the lawsuit on her behalf. <br> <br> The organization said the $29.84 that Mauldin pays each month for birth control pills is a financial burden, and that Wal-Mart is denying ``basic medical care to its women employees.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Mauldin wants Carnes to declare the company&#39;s health plan illegal and to order Wal-Mart to reimburse her and all other members of the class for uninsured prescription contraceptives. <br> <br> Stein said the company saves about $5 million a month by denying coverage for birth control. <br> <br> Wal-Mart has about 1 million employees, 80 percent of whom are women. Stein estimated that as many as 400,000 are eligible to join the lawsuit. <br> <br> In June 2001, a federal judge sided with a Seattle pharmacist who had sued her employer, declaring that it was unlawful discrimination to offer less complete insurance coverage to female workers than to males. <br> <br> In December, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that it was against federal law for employers to exclude contraceptives from their health insurance plans when they cover other preventive treatments. The decision affected only two women who had complained to the commission.