NCJW was proud to gather in front of the Supreme Court with our fellow civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights and faith community allies on March 29, to stand up for fair pay. Yards away, inside of the court, oral arguments in the case Wal-Mart v. Dukes were taking place. Ten years ago, a group of women who worked at Wal-Mart stores, including California Wal-Mart employee Betty Dukes, filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart saying that it engaged in company-wide sex discrimination by paying women less than men and systematically promoting men over equally or better qualified women. The female employees of Wal-Mart who have suffered serious wage discrimination are seeking the right to have their day in court to fight back. These women want to band together and bring a class action lawsuit, which would address systemic inequalities. Forcing each individual to bring her own lawsuit would also result in hundreds to thousands of David-and-Goliath scenarios in which access to legal resources would be so disproportionate, that there would be only a small chance that any woman could win her case. Worse still, the systemic inequalities would never even be addressed.

As oral arguments in the case unfolded inside, we stood outside chanting phrases like, “we don’t want charity, we want parity!” and “1, 2, 3, 4, we won’t take this anymore, 5, 6, 7, 8, fair pay cannot wait!”. We stood chanting for nearly two hours before the defendants and plaintiffs eventually walked down the steps of the court to the waiting press. We proudly stood in eye-shot of Betty Dukes and just a handful of the 1.6 million female Wal-Mart employees, showing them that they are not alone, that there is power in numbers.

As I looked around the crowd of friends, colleagues, and new friends I was meeting for the first time, I thought about the power that comes from solidarity. I thought about how lonely it would feel if NCJW were the only organization working to ensure workplace rights for women. I considered how much more difficult it would be as a lone person standing before the court that day. How much less effective my chants alone would be in engaging media around this issue and showing support for Betty Dukes and her sisters. I thought about how, through collaboration with other organizations, grassroots activists, and faith leaders, we are greater than the sum of our parts.

The case before the Supreme Court calls on the justices and the law to recognize this principle: that a class-action lawsuit enables individuals to band together, to have a collective voice. One woman alone cannot stand up against the largest corporation in the world and have any hope of succeeding in her effort to transform corporate policy and culture to make it more just. But 1.6 million women can. That is why we stand with the women of Wal-Mart, why we signed an amicus brief in their case, and why we continue to work with our allies in Washington, DC, and across the country to fight for fair pay for all.