NEW YORK — Wal-Mart scored a big victory on Monday when the Supreme Court threw out the largest sex-discrimination case in U.S. history. Still, the nation's biggest private employer has been forced to address the issues raised in the suit.

Since the sex-bias lawsuit was given class action status in 2004 on behalf of 1.6 million women, Wal-Mart has set up a women's council that represents each of the overseas markets and focused training and other efforts on advancing women into management roles. As a result, Wal-Mart says the percentage of entry and midlevel women managers has increased over the past five years from 38.8 percent to 41.2 percent.

During a conference call with journalists Monday, Gisel Ruiz, executive vice president of people at Wal-Mart's U.S. stores, said that she has seen the advancement opportunities grow for women, who make up 57 percent of the Bentonville, Ark., based company's workforce.

She said that Wal-Mart has created specific training and mentoring programs to help prepare women for opportunities at all levels in the company.

The Wal-Mart lawsuit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, said that women are grossly underrepresented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart had responded that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.

And while the Supreme Court's decision throws out the class action suit, it doesn't end litigation. Wal-Mart is expected to keep fighting sex-discrimination cases on a smaller scale.