Matthews-based Family Dollar recently won a round in a discrimination lawsuit brought by female store managers, but the plaintiffs are attempting to appeal a judge's recent ruling denying them class action status.

The federal lawsuit was filed in 2008, on behalf of 48 female Family Dollar store managers, who claim they were paid less than male managers performing the same jobs.

On January 13, U.S. District Court Judge Max Cogburn denied the managers' motion to grant the lawsuit class action status, which would have opened the suit to hundreds if not thousands of female store managers.

Cogburn, in Charlotte, ruled that the case was substantially similar to a massive employment discrimination case last year against Wal-Mart, in which the plaintiffs sought class action status for more than 1 million women working for Wal-Mart. In that case the Supreme Court ruled that their employment situations were too different to combine all of them together as one class.

"The plaintiffs in this case will have nothing in common but their gender and their participation in this lawsuit," said John Wester, an attorney with Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson who is representing Family Dollar. He argued that the managers were from different geographic regions, had different ages and work experience, and that they shouldn't be grouped as a class.

The case is the first nationwide attempt at a class action employment discrimination lawsuit ruled on since the Supreme Court's Wal-Mart decision, said Wester. Thé court stuck with the Supreme Court's reasoning in ruling on the Family Dollar case.

"Here, the complaint alleges that plaintiffs were discriminated against based on their gender as a result of subjective decisions made at the local store level," wrote Cogburn. "This court finds...plaintiffs also cannot satisfy the nearly identical commonality showing - of similarly "situated persons" - that is required to certify a collective action."

The managers could have pursued their claims as separate cases, a far more difficult route. But on Thursday, lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a motion seeking permission to appeal Cogburn's decision.

They argue that decisions about pay for store managers are made at Family Dollar's corporate level, not at the separate stores, and that the female managers should qualify as a class for a single lawsuit. "There are specific, objective criteria applied "at the corporate level of...operations" that have disparate impact on women's salaries as Store Managers," wrote the lawyers. "Women are systematically paid less than their male peers in the same job."

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will now decide whether or not to hear the appeal.