Walmart Faces Federal Civil Rights Employment Discrimination Suit in Washington

Two Washington state workers filed a class-action civil rights employment discrimination complaint against Walmart Inc. last week, accusing the nation's largest retailer of employment discrimination in a case that now sits before a federal judge in Seattle.

Plaintiffs Christopher Burney and Kathleen Rehak originally brought the case in King County Superior Court. Walmart moved quickly to pull it into federal court: on March 20, the company's attorneys filed a Notice of Removal at 12:38 p.m., transferring the matter to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, where it was docketed as case number 2:26-cv-00949. The federal docket classifies the suit under Nature of Suit 442, the standard code for civil rights employment matters, with jurisdiction asserted on diversity grounds under 28 U.S.C. § 1332.

The complaint, listed as a class action in the federal docket attachments, runs nine pages. The specific discrimination allegations, the proposed class definition, the statutory claims, and the relief sought are contained in that document, which Walmart attached as Exhibit 1 to its removal filing. The docket labels the claims as employment discrimination, though the underlying facts will not be known until the complaint is reviewed.

Judge Tana Lin, a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle, has been assigned to the case.

Burney and Rehak are represented by four attorneys at Emery Reddy PC: Timothy W. Emery, Hannah Hamley, Patrick B. Reddy, and Paul Cipriani Jr. The Seattle-based firm has previously taken on large corporations including Amazon and Microsoft on behalf of Washington workers, and handles claims covering discrimination, wage and hour violations, and Washington's Silenced No More Act, among other worker protections.

Walmart is defended by a three-attorney team from Ogletree Deakins' Seattle office: Elizabeth Ashley Paynter, who filed the removal notice, along with Lauren Titchbourne and Adam T. Pankratz.

Ogletree Deakins is one of the largest management-side labor and employment firms in the country, a standard choice for major retailers facing class litigation. Neither firm has commented publicly on the case.

For Walmart associates in Washington state, the case raises questions that track closely with concerns already circulating on worker forums: whether the company's employment practices comply with federal and state civil rights law, and whether workers who believe they have faced discrimination can pursue claims collectively rather than one by one. The class action filing, if it survives a motion to dismiss, could eventually draw in a broader group of current or former Washington employees.

The case is in its earliest procedural stage. No scheduling order, response deadline, or initial conference date appears on the public docket yet. The next significant development will likely be Walmart's response to the complaint, which could include a motion to dismiss or an answer to the allegations.