Washington, DC…The Supreme Court has ruled for Wal-Mart in deciding that the sex discrimination lawsuit cannot proceed as a class action suit. This reverses a 9th Circuit decision that would have allowed up to 1.6 million women to sue that retail giant in a single class action case.

Now the cases will have to be tried separately and but Wal-Mart will be under less pressure to settle and will sidestep the risk of what may have been billions of dollars of potential damages.