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Hi and welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the U.S. Supreme Court. I'm Dahlia Liffwick,

Slate's Supreme Court correspondent. One of the issues that the Supreme Court has been drilling deeply into in the last couple of years is the question of class action litigation.

It is certainly the case that the Roberts

Court has been slowly eroding the possibility of bringing a class action suit, and that's

in response to the argument made by big businesses, that class actions have simply become frivolous

and costly and don't even benefit the workers that they seek to help.

This week, the court looked at one of four class action cases that it has agreed to hear this year.

This involving a $5.8 million judgment against Tyson Foods Incorporated in a class action that

claimed that they had underpaid their workers at a Storm Lake Iowa pork plan. Why? Because Tyson allegedly did not compensate workers fairly for the time they spent suiting up in their protective gear and walking out to the slaughterhouse. Now, at the highest level of abstraction, the issue for the court is just whether everyone joined in a class

has to prove individually that he or she was harmed in the same way by the claim misconduct.

In this case, that really has to do with how long it took to put your gear on. This is also one

in a line of cases that just has to do with this question of when donning and doffing your work

gear is part of a job for which you should be compensated. But this appeal also raises some

pretty unique questions about how statistical modeling can be used to calculate damages in these

suits. And joining us today is Carter Phillips, who represented Tyson Foods this week at the

High Court. Phillips is a partner at the this week at the High Court.

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