Man’s Best Friend

This cartoon was drawn in response to the Supreme Court throwing out a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart by a large swath of female employees earlier this week. The lawsuit, which has been pending since 2001, alleges gender discrimination in pay and promotion on the retail giant’s part. Wal-Mart contends that it is blameless for any discrimination that’s occurred at stores it owns because it has corporate policies forbidding such things on the books, and the Supreme Court seems to agree, adding that the case’s 1.5 million plaintiffs do not constitute a “class” because their individual grievances don’t have enough in common.

I didn’t feel I could say, at this point, whether or not I thought Wal-Mart was guilty of said discrimination, but I did feel the Court’s ruling that Wal-Mart’s guilt or innocence shouldn’t even be examined was yet another example of a pro-corporate bias there, so I wanted my cartoon to be about that. The way I see it, while downplaying any specific references to Wal-Mart or what it stands accused of may make the cartoon a little less timely, it has the benefit of making it a little more timeless–this image could be applied to many other recent cases where the Supreme Court left its judgement to the preferences of America’s corporate aristocracy–Citizen’s United springs immediately to mind–but the joke is clever and original enough to keep it from being boring or generic.

I like the idea of gags that play off Lady Justice’s supposed “blindness,” although this is only the second cartoon I’ve finished that uses one, the first being this piece on Saddam Hussein’s execution.