The last two weeks saw a rush of EEO activity, with a new ruling in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. case leading a group of class action decisions and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission closing its fiscal year with a flurry of new lawsuits.

While generally viewed as a victory for the company and the defense bar, the Supreme Court's nixing of a proposed nationwide class of more than one million female workers in Dukes did not spell the end of the case, as evidenced by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California's Sept. 21 rejection of the company's bid for dismissal of a renewed, regional class of approximately 100,000 female employees. The district court found that the justices' ruling was not an absolute bar against the plaintiffs seeking certification of the newly proposed, narrower class.

Other recent employment class action rulings include:

• A different Northern District of California judge deciding that a proposed class of approximately 700 female Costco Wholesale Corp. employees was not prevented by Dukes from pursuing a nationwide "hybrid" class action seeking injunctive relief under one section of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and compensatory and punitive damages under a separate section.

• The rejection by the Northern District of Ohio of a proposed class of up to 10,000 African American employees of Progressive Corp., which sought to challenge the company's use of an assessment tool to rate employees for promotion, compensation, and other purposes that they claimed favored white and older workers. The court found that the workers failed to raise their proposed class claims in an EEOC charge.

• The Eastern District of New York's dismissal, as "premature," of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch's attempted reliance on Dukes to thwart a group of female former or current financial advisers from advancing their class claims of sex discrimination in the companies' compensation and account distribution, because the plaintiffs had yet to seek class certification.

On the enforcement side of things, EEOC's end-of-the-year flood of new case filings included the commission filing at least 40 lawsuits within the last 10 business days of September.  

Among those cases, claims for disability discrimination--cited in 16 cases--far surpassed in frequency any other form of discrimination asserted by EEOC. The next most frequently claimed type of discrimination was race discrimination--in eight cases--followed by sexual harassment--in six cases--and retaliation--in five cases. Age discrimination and pregnancy discrimination each were alleged in four cases, and sex discrimination was alleged in 2 cases and pay bias in one case.  None of the cases claimed national origin or religious discrimination. Press releases about most of the new lawsuits are available on the agency's website.