Systemic Discrimination is Legal as long as you are Large

Welcome to the New United States.

Trust that Jared Bernstein (if this one shows up, instead of this one) will have more on how much future damage can be done to the economy.

UPDATE: Scott Lemieux weighs in, correctly seeing it as worse than any reasonable examination of the facts would have permitted*:

Systematic discrimination at a large corporation such as Wal-Mart simply cannot be addressed piecemeal. I could have lived with a ruling that focused on the unique facts of this case. But in their broad ruling, the Court’s five most conservative justices have made it much more difficult for civil rights laws to be meaningfully enforced in practice. It will be part of the classic conservertarian bait-and-switch: individuals filing lawsuits will not have enough evidence to prove discrimination, and class action suits that develop systematic evidence will be thrown out for not having enough in common.

Between this and Andrew Samwick’s recent declaration that the rule of law should not apply in the United States, it’s a good week for the youngsters among our readers to check out this site.

*Although, as is becoming far too usual, on par with my cynicism being optimistic.