CPR’s new website now hosts the CPR Speaks blog. You can find new posts, at https://www.cpradr.org/news/cpr-speaks.
Supreme Court
2021-2022 SCOTUS Arbitration Wrap-Up
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday wrapped up its arbitration docket with a decision in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana, No. 20–1573.
That was the last of five arbitration matters scheduled, argued, and decided in the 2021-2022 Court term. It’s an unprecedented amount of cases in the area closely watched by the CPR and ADR communities, even in a term which, to be sure, has been characterized by controversial cases involving emergency orders on Covid-19 vaccinations, and forthcoming decisions on immigration, gun rights, and abortion.
We were joined today by members of our recurring, occasional YouTube panel to talk about Viking River Cruises and the other cases in an attempt to sum up the substantial and substantive arbitration instruction that has emerged from the nation’s top Court over the past several weeks in the five opinions.
University of North Texas Dallas College of Law Professor of Practice and Assistant Director of Experiential Education Angela Downes and veteran Texas attorney-arbitrator Richard Faulkner provide the insight.
With six SCOTUS cases as subjects, there’s a lot of quick references to the cases. You can find the background case histories in previews, argument analysis, and dissections of the opinions on CPR Speaks here.
And here’s a quick guide to our CPR Speaks decision analysis for each case (containing links to our historical coverage), in the chronological order of Supreme Court decisions:
- Badgerow v. Walters, No. 20-1143 (March 31), on the limits of federal court jurisdiction under the Federal Arbitration Act. (on CPR Speaks here).
- Morgan v. Sundance Inc., No. 21-328 (May 23), holding that a party resisting arbitration seeking to show its adversary waived its arbitration right need not prove that the adversary prejudiced the party by its actions (here).
- Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, No. 21-309 (May 30), holding an airport ramp supervisor qualifies for the Federal Arbitration Act Section 1 exemption from arbitration (here).
- ZF Automotive US Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd., No. 21-401 (June 13) consolidated with AlixPartners LLP v. Fund for Protection of Investor Rights in Foreign States, No. 21-518 (June 13), holding that 28 U.S.C. § 1728 cannot be used in aiding discovery efforts for overseas arbitration tribunals (here and here).
- Viking River Cruises Inc. v. Moriana, No. 20–1573 (June 15), holding that the Federal Arbitration Act mostly preempts California’s Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 in that employees who have agreed to mandatory arbitration must arbitrate their individual PAGA claims (here).
The above video can be found directly on YouTube at https://youtu.be/KFV8xIvA_o8.
[END]
Supreme Court Limits California’s PAGA Law on Employment Claims, Preempting It in Part under the Federal Arbitration Act
By Arjan Bir Singh Sodhi & Russ Bleemer
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that employers may require their workers to arbitrate employment disputes under California’s Private Attorneys General Act, a 2003 law that allows Californians to file suit on behalf of the state for employment-law violations.
The Federal Arbitration Act, the Court found today in Viking River Cruises Inc. v. Moriana, No. 20–1573, preempts at least in part the California state PAGA law, which had been the source of tens of thousands of court claims in the face of arbitration requirements, according to an industry interest group formed to fight the PAGA arbitration ban.
This morning’s decision is available on the Supreme Court’s website here.
The dispute traces to the controversial California Supreme Court case of Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles LLC, 327 P.3d 129 (Cal. 2014) (available at https://stanford.io/3ILcTY5), where the state’s top Court held “that an arbitration agreement requiring an employee as a condition of employment to give up the right to bring representative PAGA actions in any forum is contrary to public policy.”
Today’s majority opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. does not fully invalidate PAGA, and takes issue with arguments on both sides. In fact, it leaves wiggle room for the California courts and legislature to tinker with PAGA to provide relief for what it terms “non-individual” claims that the original plaintiff no longer has standing to make under the decision.
But it strikes the Iskanian reasoning, and criticizes the PAGA statute’s orientation, noting that it isn’t clear on individual’s claims as opposed to representative actions. Alito explains that representative actions under the law are not only those of the “individual claims” of employees who seeks to file suit for workplace claims under the state’s Labor Code, but also representative PAGA claims predicated on code violations “sustained by other employees.” The latter, under Iskanian, may not be subject to mandatory arbitration.
That didn’t sit well with the majority opinion, which contrasts PAGA’s single suit involving many claims but solely by an individual on behalf of the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency, as opposed to class-action cases which may involve many claims but also on behalf of many absent plaintiffs who are certified as a class.
The bottom line is that the representative aspect of PAGA as it applies to arbitration was stricken in today’s Court decision, an 8-1 decision with two concurring opinions. There was a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, who maintained his longstanding view–a short dissenting opinion that he has issued on at least seven other occasions–that the Federal Arbitration Act doesn’t apply in state courts.
The results already are seen as a relief by California business interests, with the Iskanian arbitration bar eliminated. Los Angeles-based Anthony J. Oncidi, a partner and co-chair, of Proskauer Rose’s Labor and Employment Department, writes in an email,
Employers all over California are rejoicing today with the news that this peculiar PAGA exemption from arbitration is finally gone. Employers should run, not walk, to take advantage of this significant new development by immediately reviewing and, if necessary, amending their arbitration agreements to encompass PAGA claims. And as for those employers who, for whatever reason, have not yet availed themselves of an updated arbitration program, this is just the most recent reason to consider doing so.
Another management-side attorney, Christopher C. Murray, an Indianapolis shareholder in Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., writes,
Today’s decision is, for now, a victory for employers with well-crafted arbitration agreements containing class action and representative action waivers and severability clauses. However, it’s a nuanced decision that leaves open a number of issues. One is whether the California legislature can amend PAGA to give a plaintiff standing to bring a representative PAGA action even if the plaintiff cannot pursue an individual claim in the same action. In short, it’s unlikely that today’s opinion will be the final word on representative PAGA actions and arbitration.
[Murray co-chairs the Employment Disputes Committee at the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution-CPR, which provides this blog.]
“While today’s decision is disappointing and adds new limits, key aspects of PAGA remain in effect and the law of our state,” noted California State Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement this afternoon. He added: “Workers can continue to bring claims on behalf of the State of California to protect themselves and, in many instances, their colleagues all across California. At the California Department of Justice, we will continue to stand with workers to fight for their rights everywhere.” (The full press release is available here.)
Today’s decision may serve to derail efforts to enact PAGA-like statutes in other states. Had the law stood in its entirety and its arbitration end-run survived, labor likely would have reinvigorated pushes in blue states to add similar laws. See, e.g., Dan Walters, “The Fight Over the Private Attorneys General Act,” Orange County [Calif.] Register (April 5) (available at https://bit.ly/3MOO7s5).
The PAGA law, according to employers, negated the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court cases of Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S.Ct. 1612 (2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2Y66dwK), which authorized mandatory predispute arbitration, and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) (available at http://bit.ly/2VcI4mi), which permits mandatory arbitration backed with class waivers in consumer contracts.
The Court heard the oral arguments on March 30, the last of four arbitration cases argued in nine days at the nation’s top court. See Russ Bleemer, “Adding a Claim, and Avoiding Arbitration: The Supreme Court Reviews California’s Private Attorneys General Act,” CPR Speaks blog (March 30) (available at https://bit.ly/3NWMFoQ).
It’s also the last of the five arbitration cases the nation’s top Court has accepted and decided in its 2021-2022 term, following closely on Monday’s decision in consolidated international arbitration cases focused on cross-border discovery issues. Links to reports on all of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions, as well as case previews and in-depth reviews of the arguments, can be found on the CPR Speaks blog here.
* * *
Under the PAGA law, employees may bring forth disputes on behalf of similarly situated workers who also allege employment violations. Angie Moriana, who worked as a sales representative for Viking River Cruises in 2016 and 2017, filed suit against the company in a representative action for alleged violations of California labor laws. Moriana alleged that Viking River Cruises violated California wage and hour laws. She had signed a pre-dispute agreement agreeing to file her claims in arbitration individually, and waiving her ability to bring a class action. As a result, Viking River Cruises sought arbitration.
In Iskanian in 2014, the California Supreme Court ruled that though PAGA suits are filed on behalf of the state, employees cannot forgo their ability to file these claims individually. The California Supreme Court decided Iskanian before the U.S. Supreme Court–showing its broad deference to the Federal Arbitration Act’s recognition of the enforcement of arbitration agreements–decided the Epic Systems mandatory employment arbitration case.
This Iskanian mandatory arbitration bar reasoned that PAGA plaintiffs represent the state as private attorneys general even though the state was not a party to the arbitration agreement. In Epic Systems v. Lewis, the U.S. Supreme Court held that mandatory arbitration agreements do not violate employees’ rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.
PAGA supporters argued that the law supplements the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency’s limited enforcement capability by allowing employees to enforce the state labor laws. Employers contended that the inability to arbitrate workplace disputes cost money and jobs.
During the March 30 Supreme Court oral arguments (full CPR Speaks coverage at the link above), the court’s liberal justices were more animated, and appeared to back the California Supreme Court prohibiting mandatory arbitration of PAGA claims. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan questioned why the state’s choice to enforce its workplace regulations should be overridden by the FAA, a statute now nearly a century old.
The Court conservatives did not share the same doubts. Contrary to Moriana’s assertion that requiring arbitration essentially waives a PAGA claim, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stated that a PAGA plaintiff does have a right to pursue the substantive claim, although through a different means. Today’s opinion author, Justice Alito, appeared to imply that the court’s Epic Systems decision supported finding arbitration agreements enforceable in the face of PAGA allegations.
* * *
Alito continued that line of reasoning in this morning’s decision, invoking the Court’s arbitration precedents, and discussing the expected characteristics of arbitration as a bilateral process, not a representative or class proceeding.
Alito criticized the California statute’s structure—”a PAGA action asserting multiple code violations affecting a range of different employees does not constitute ‘a single claim’ in even the broadest possible sense”—and noted that the law prohibited dividing the matter into the constituent individual and representative claims.
The opinion focused on the definitions of representative claims in bilateral arbitration. It states that while precedents don’t hold “that the FAA allows parties to contract out of anything that might amplify defense risks,” the practice makes “it . . . impossible to decide representative claims in an arbitration that is ‘bilateral’ in every dimension.” Alito wrote, “[O]ur cases hold that States cannot coerce individuals into forgoing arbitration by taking the individualized and informal procedures characteristic of traditional arbitration off the table.”
The federal-state law conflict, however, was elsewhere. The majority opinion–in a section where Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, did not join with the majority—finds a conflict between PAGA and the FAA in PAGA’s “built-in mechanism of claim joinder.” The Court says that Iskanian’s mandate of joinder of “aggrieved” employees’ “personally suffered” Labor Code violations “as a basis to join to the action any claims that could have been raised by the State in an enforcement proceeding” coerced parties’ PAGA claims out of arbitration.
The majority invoked its historic view of arbitration, holding that “state law cannot condition the enforceability of an arbitration agreement on the availability of a procedural mechanism that would permit a party to expand the scope of the arbitration by introducing claims that the parties did not jointly agree to arbitrate.”
Alito adds that PAGA allowed parties to avoid their agreement to arbitrate their individual claims after the fact and demand court or arbitration that exceeds the scope of the original agreement: “The only way for parties to agree to arbitrate one of an employee’s PAGA claims is to also ‘agree’ to arbitrate all other PAGA claims in the same arbitral proceeding.” [Emphasis is in the opinion.]
That aspect of the California law did not survive. “We hold that the FAA preempts the rule of Iskanian insofar as it precludes division of PAGA actions into individual and non-individual claims through an agreement to arbitrate,” Alito wrote. The agreement’s severability clause, the opinion concludes, allows Viking River Cruises to compel individual arbitration of respondent Moriana’s claims.
The opinion also dismisses Moriana’s non-individual claims, holding that, with the dismissal, Moriana no longer had standing, leaving those claims–still valid in the majority’s view–in limbo. Instead of court or arbitration, however, the opinion targets the law. Alito concludes, “PAGA provides no mechanism to enable a court to adjudicate non-individual PAGA claims once an individual claim has been committed to a separate proceeding.”
* * *
In her concurrence, Justice Sotomayor picks up on the majority’s closing point as well as followed from her oral argument concerns about whether the FAA could eliminate claims chosen by the California Legislature for its constituents via PAGA.
First, she asserts that the majority “makes clear that California is not powerless to address its sovereign concern that it cannot adequately enforce its Labor Code without assistance from private attorneys general.”
But then, returning to Alito’s closing point that the nonindividual claims have no outlet due to Moriana’s apparent lack of standing under California law, Sotomayor agrees, noting that there are options:
Of course, if this Court’s understanding of state law is wrong, California courts, in an appropriate case, will have the last word. Alternatively, if this Court’s understanding is right, the California Legislature is free to modify the scope of statutory standing under PAGA within state and federal constitutional limits.
Viking River Cruises, says Washington, D.C., arbitrator Mark Kantor, who closely follows the Court’s arbitration jurisprudence and previewed the case for CPR Speaks here, “leaves considerable scope for the California legislature to rework PAGA to reestablish a representative action that could survive FAA preemption and make a waiver of PAGA unenforceable, although possibly enforceable in an arbitral forum if the relevant employment agreements calls for arbitration.”
* * *
Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s additional opinion is brief but goes further–concurring in the judgment, at the same time stepping away from much of the majority’s discussion of representative and individual actions.
She concurs with Section III of the opinion, the FAA-PAGA conflict because of the California law’s mandatory joinder provisions that would bring representative claims to arbitration. Joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh, Barrett writes that she agrees “that reversal is required under our precedent because PAGA’s procedure is akin to other aggregation devices that cannot be imposed on a party to an arbitration agreement,” citing four seminal Supreme Court cases including Epic Systems and AT&T Mobility (see above).
But her one-paragraph concurrence concludes, and could add fuel to moves by the California Legislature to reform PAGA in light of today’s decision:
I would say nothing more than that. The discussion in Parts II and IV of the Court’s opinion is unnecessary to the result, and much of it addresses disputed state-law questions as well as arguments not pressed or passed upon in this case.*
That asterisk is to a footnote, in which Justice Barrett adds, “The same is true of Part I,” which described the PAGA, Iskanian, and case histories.
Chief Justice Roberts dissented from the footnote, and joined in the Alito majority opinion for Parts 1 and III.
* * *
Sodhi, a former CPR intern, last month received his LLM at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, at Malibu, Calif.’s Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law. Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR.
[END]
More on Section 1782: Why the U.S. Supreme Court Says the Law Doesn’t Permit Discovery Requests from International Arbitrations
By Tamia Sutherland & Russ Bleemer
Here is a deeper dive into today’s U.S. Supreme Court consolidated decision in ZF Automotive US Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd., No. 21-401, which was consolidated with and covers AlixPartners LLP v. Fund for Protection of Investor Rights in Foreign States, No. 21-518. Does the new decision, which restricts discovery under a law aiding foreign governmental entities in U.S. courts, also limit discovery under the Federal Arbitration Act?
Our post covering the opinion from this morning can be found on CPR Speaks here.
In today’s unanimous 9-0 opinion, available here, the Court held that the use of 28 U.S.C. § 1782 for discovery in international proceedings was limited. “Only a governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative body constitutes a ‘foreign or international tribunal’ under 28 U. S. C. §1782,” wrote Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her first arbitration decision since ascending to the bench in 2020, “and the bodies at issue in these cases do not qualify.”
The statute, as the opinion notes, “permits district courts to order testimony or the production of evidence ‘for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal.’”
Specifically, Section 1782 states:
The district court of the district in which a person resides or is found may order him to give his testimony or statement or to produce a document or other thing for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal, including criminal investigations conducted before formal accusation.
Justice Barrett focused in the opinion on the phrase “foreign or international tribunal,” citing Black’s Law Dictionary and the Court’s only previous Sec. 1782 holding, Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., 542 U. S. 241 (2004) (available at https://bit.ly/3xKIMO5), which permitted discovery to a foreign tribunal but didn’t decide the arbitration-application issue. She parses the definitions individually of “foreign,” “international,” and “tribunal.”
Citing the U.S. government’s brief, which sought a limited use of the statute that didn’t include arbitration, Barrett writes,
“Tribunal” is a word with potential governmental or sovereign connotations, so “foreign tribunal” more naturally refers to a tribunal belonging to a foreign nation than to a tribunal that is simply located in a foreign nation. And for a tribunal to belong to a foreign nation, the tribunal must possess sovereign authority conferred by that nation.”
John B. Pinney, counsel to Cincinnati’s Graydon Head & Ritchey–who is counsel of record on an AlixPartners amicus brief urging the Court to accept the case on behalf of CPR, publisher of this blog (details here)–says that the government’s intervention in the case was pivotal. He cites the government brief and, in particular, Assistant Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler’s participation in the March 23 Supreme Court hearing.
“Between the lines,” notes Pinney in an email, “Kneedler’s argument on behalf of the United States did change the momentum of the proponents’ arguments as well as bolstering the opponents’ arguments. . . . Justice [Stephen G.] Breyer, whose early questions seemed to put him in the proponent’s camp, appeared to move toward the opponents’ position during Kneedler’s argument when he made a comment that the well-heeled users of international arbitration could petition Congress if they wanted authorization for federal court judicial assistance. In other words: the view that the operative phrase, ‘foreign or international tribunal,’ in Sec. 1782 ought not be expansively interpreted and that, as a result, it should be up to Congress to be clear if it truly wanted federal courts to have jurisdiction to provide discovery assistance for international arbitral tribunals.”
The Supreme Court opinion’s section on the meaning of the statutory wording concludes by excluding private matters, stating,
“[F]oreign tribunal” and “international tribunal” complement one another; the former is a tribunal imbued with governmental authority by one nation, and the latter is a tribunal imbued with governmental authority by multiple nations.
* * *
The opinion then compares 28 U.S.C. 1782 discovery to the Federal Arbitration Act. It notes that limiting the law’s use to “only bodies exercising governmental authority is consistent with Congress’ charge to the Commission,” referring to the Commission on International Rules of Judicial Procedure, which studied U.S. judicial assistance to foreign countries, and recommended improvements, including the law.
Barrett discusses the effects of adopting a broader reading, and, rejecting the plea, notes:
[T]he animating purpose of §1782 is comity: Permitting federal courts to assist foreign and international governmental bodies promotes respect for foreign governments and encourages reciprocal assistance. It is difficult to see how enlisting district courts to help private bodies would serve that end. Such a broad reading of §1782 would open district court doors to any interested person seeking assistance for proceedings before any private adjudicative body—a category broad enough to include everything from a commercial arbitration panel to a university’s student disciplinary tribunal. [The opinion cites petitioner ZF Automotive’s brief.]
An extension to private bodies of Section 1782 would create “significant tension with the FAA” because the discovery allowed under Section 1782 is broader, Barrett explains.
But in discussing the contrast, the passage that followed also appears to refine the FAA’s use, and is sure to raise questions about the limits among veteran practitioners:
Among other differences, the FAA permits only the arbitration panel to request discovery, see 9 U. S. C. §7, while district courts can entertain §1782 requests from foreign or international tribunals or any “interested person,” 28 U. S. C. §1782(a). In addition, prearbitration discovery is off the table under the FAA but broadly available under §1782. See Intel, 542 U. S., at 259 (holding that discovery is available for use in proceedings “within reasonable contemplation”).
“This wouldn’t be the first time the Court made arbitration law via dicta,” notes Fordham University School of Law adjunct George H. Friedman, a former longtime senior vice president of dispute resolution at FINRA in an email, adding, “Manifest disregard” [which had been used in addition to FAA Sec. 10 to overturn awards] was announced via dicta in Wilko v. Swan back in 1953.” For more on the Court’s FAA gloss, see George H. Friedman, “SCOTUS Decides ZF Automotive: Yet Another Unanimous Decision, This One Holding that Section 1782 Discovery in Foreign Arbitrations Applies Only to Governmental Tribunals,” Securities Arbitration Alert (June 13) (available here).
Barrett concludes the Court’s Section 1782 definition by noting,
§1782 requires a “foreign or international tribunal” to be governmental or intergovernmental. Thus, a “foreign tribunal” is one that exercises governmental authority conferred by a single nation, and an “international tribunal” is one that exercises governmental authority conferred by two or more nations. Private adjudicatory bodies do not fall within §1782.
* * *
In looking at the facts in the two arbitration cases on appeal to the Supreme Court, the opinion analyzed whether the “adjudicative bodies” were “governmental or intergovernmental,” concluding that the matters were private arbitration, and not subject to Section 1782 discovery.
It was an easy call on the ZF Automotive case:
[P]rivate entities do not become governmental because laws govern them and courts enforce their contracts—that would erase any distinction between private and governmental adjudicative bodies. [Respondent] Luxshare’s implausibly broad definition of a governmental adjudicative body is nothing but an attempted end run around §1782’s limit.
The opinion quickly notes, however, that the AlixPartners case involving the Lithuanian government is harder. It features a government on one side of a case where the arbitration option is contained in an international treaty rather than a private contract, making the case appear to be an intergovernmental dispute under Section 1782.
“Yet neither Lithuania’s presence nor the treaty’s existence is dispositive, because Russia and Lithuania are free to structure investor-state dispute resolution as they see fit,” the opinion states.
Instead, wrote Barrett, “What matters is the substance of their agreement: Did these two nations intend to confer governmental authority on an ad hoc panel formed pursuant to the treaty?”
The Supreme Court analyzed the parties’ contractual arbitration options, which included using court-related processes, as well as Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and the International Chamber of Commerce’s Court of Arbitration.
But the parties chose “an ad hoc arbitration in accordance with Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).”
That, wrote Justice Barrett, “by contrast, is not a pre-existing body, but one formed for the purpose of adjudicating investor-state disputes. And nothing in the treaty reflects Russia and Lithuania’s intent that an ad hoc panel exercise governmental authority. For instance, the treaty does not itself create the panel; instead, it simply references the set of rules that govern the panel’s formation and procedure if an investor chooses that forum. In addition, the ad hoc panel “functions independently” of and is not affiliated with either Lithuania or Russia.”
The opinion adds, “So inclusion in the treaty does not, as the [respondent] Fund suggests, automatically render ad hoc arbitration governmental.” Still, after its focus on the ad hoc nature of the investor-state bilateral investment treaty dispute resolution process, the opinion notes that in the future, sovereign parties may be able to “imbue an ad hoc arbitration with official authority.”
In reversing the lower court decisions in both consolidated cases, Justice Barrett lays out the new rule of law on overseas discovery under 28 U.S. 1782 succinctly in her conclusion:
In sum, only a governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative body constitutes a “foreign or international tribunal” under §1782. Such bodies are those that exercise governmental authority conferred by one nation or multiple nations. Neither the private commercial arbitral panel in the first case nor the ad hoc arbitration panel in the second case qualifies.
* * *
Sutherland, a former year-long 2021-2022 CPR intern, will be a third-year law student at the Howard University School of Law, in Washington, D.C. this fall. Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR and John Wiley & Sons.
[END]
,
Supreme Court Bars Discovery Assistance for Private Overseas Arbitration Panels Under U.S. Law
By Tamia Sutherland & Russ Bleemer
The U.S. Supreme Court this morning restricted the use of 28 U.S.C. § 1782 for discovery in international proceedings to “[o]nly a governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative” body, but not cross-border arbitration matters.
The unanimous 9-0 decision in consolidated cases by Justice Amy Coney Barrett—her first arbitration opinion as a member of the nation’s high Court—clarifies the use of the 1964 law, which recently split the federal circuit courts over its reach for arbitration parties.
“Interpreting §1782 to reach only bodies exercising governmental authority is consistent with Congress’ charge to the Commission,” wrote Barrett–referring to the 1960’s Commission on International Rules of Judicial Procedure, to improve U.S. laws reaching overseas–in today’s decision in ZF Automotive US Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd., No. 21-401, which was consolidated with and covers AlixPartners LLP v. The Fund for Protection of Investor Rights in Foreign States, No. 21-518.
The opinion can be found here.
The issue was whether 28 U.S.C. § 1782 can be invoked in international arbitrations to obtain U.S.-style discovery for evidence. This inquiry looked at whether the statutory language—“foreign or international tribunal”—extends to arbitration panels.
The opinion had little problem removing arbitration discovery requests from a private arbitration tribunal in ZF Automotive, where a federal district court permitted discovery under the statute in the U.S. for parties in the court’s jurisdiction. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a ZF Automotive request to stay the order.
Today’s opinion, however, states that the legislative history behind the statute, as well as a comparison to the domestic-focused Federal Arbitration Act, which allows far narrower discovery than Section 1782, puts the law’s focus on discovery for governmental bodies, not private arbitration tribunals.
The Court had more difficulty with the AlixPartners case, which involved the government of Lithuania. But the Barrett opinion says that the parties’ actions under a bilateral investment treaty are the key here–the parties were acting more like private parties than governmental entities in setting up an ad hoc ADR process.
“An ad hoc arbitration panel, by contrast, is not a pre-existing body, but one formed for the purpose of adjudicating investor-state disputes,” wrote Barrett, “And nothing in the treaty reflects Russia and Lithuania’s intent that an ad hoc panel exercise governmental authority.”
AlixPartners focused on investor-state arbitration, in which one of the parties is the Lithuanian government. In AlixPartners, the respondent is a Russian entity representing investors pursuing claims before an ad hoc UNCITRAL-rules arbitral tribunal against Lithuania for the investors’ financial losses resulting from the insolvency of a Lithuanian bank. The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals permitted discovery, finding that the ad hoc panel qualified under Section 1782 as a “foreign or international” tribunal rather than a private arbitration matter.
The Barrett opinion notes that the inclusion of arbitration in the BIT did not automatically make the process a governmental proceeding meriting the use of Section 1782. “Instead,” wrote Barrett, “it reflects the countries’ choice to offer investors the potentially appealing option of bringing their disputes to a private arbitration panel that operates like commercial arbitration panels do.”
[The publisher of this blog, CPR, urged the Court in an amicus brief to hear the AlixPartners case last year, without taking a merits position on the case. Details are available here.]
In ZF Automotive, a private commercial contract with ZF Automotive’s German parent required that disputes be arbitrated before the German Arbitration Institute, an arbitration provider. The ZF Automotive case, however, was brought in Detroit before the commencement of the Germany private international arbitration.
The U.S. District Court allowed the requested discovery. On appeal to the Sixth Circuit, ZF Automotive, in an unusual move, petitioned for certiorari before judgment to bypass waiting for the Sixth Circuit to decide its appeal. The Sixth Circuit, as noted, declined to stay the lower court’s order. Respondent Luxshare had requested and was granted discovery for the arbitration, in which it alleged fraud against ZF Automotive, under Section 1782. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on Dec. 10, and reversed the lower court decision today.
During a two-week, four-argument deep dive into arbitration law and practice in March (see this CPR Speaks link for previews, argument summaries, and reports on the decisions issued so far here), the Supreme Court heard these Sec. 1782 consolidated arguments as well as an oral argument from the U.S. Solicitor General’s office.
Veteran Assistant Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler’s contention that the Court should be cautious in accepting respondents’ arguments because any expansion of the scope of Section 1782’s reach should be addressed by Congress is reflected in the decision-making process, and the U.S. government’s brief is cited by Justice Barrett. Full details on the March 23 ZF Automotive oral arguments are available on this CPR Speaks blog here.
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Sutherland, a former year-long 2021-2022 CPR intern, will be a third-year law student at the Howard University School of Law, in Washington, D.C. this fall. Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR and John Wiley & Sons.
[END]
Supreme Court Backs Airport Worker, Applies Federal Arbitration Act Sec. 1 Exemption, and Sends Employment Dispute to Court
By Russ Bleemer and R. Daniel Knaap
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed unanimously a Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that a worker who loads or unloads goods from vehicles that engage in interstate commerce, but does not physically transport goods, is exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act as a “worker engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” under FAA Sec. 1, resolving a circuit split.
Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, No. 21-309 (today’s decision is available here), involves a Fair Labor Standards Act suit brought by Illinois respondent Latrice Saxon against petitioner Southwest Airlines Co., her employer. Southwest was initially successful, moving to dismiss under the FAA despite Saxon’s argument that she, as a ramp supervisor, is exempt from the FAA under FAA Sec. 1. Case No, 19-cv-0403 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 8, 2019) (available here). The District Court had followed the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
But the Seventh Circuit reversed, agreeing with Saxon that airplane cargo loaders are engaged in interstate commerce, even though she was located solely at Chicago Midway International Airport. Saxon, in the Seventh Circuit’s view, consequently is a transportation worker whose employment contract is exempt from the FAA. 993 F.3d 492 (7th Cir. 2021) (available here).
That view was affirmed today in the 8-0 opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, erasing the circuit split with the Fifth Circuit. Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn’t participate.
Southwest “maintain[ed] that §1 ‘exempts classes of workers based on their conduct, not their employer’s,’ and the relevant class therefore includes only those airline employees who are actually engaged in interstate commerce in their day-to-day work,” according to today’s opinion.
The view that the localized worker was not engaged in interstate commerce and was therefore subject to arbitration was soundly rejected in today’s opinion. The case may have implications for app-based companies, like Amazon and Lyft, who strongly urged the Court to back Southwest in amicus briefs and reject the use of the FAA Sec. 1 carve-out exemption from arbitration for Saxon.
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The Court has usually been focused on getting cases into arbitration, and that hasn’t meant success for individuals fighting arbitration and seeking court processes.
Yet the three arbitration cases decided this term, all based in employment matters, backed the workers. In addition to affirming today’s employee victory in the Seventh Circuit, last month, the Court ruled in favor of a Taco Bell worker resisting her employer’s motion to compel arbitration in a unanimous opinion by Justice Elena Kagan. The Court found that a party need not show it was prejudiced by the moving party’s actions, but instead focuses on the employer’s actions to indicate whether the employer had waived its right to arbitration. Details on Morgan v. Sundance Inc., No. 21-328 (available at https://bit.ly/3NywXj5) are available on CPR Speaks here.
In the first of the 2021-2022 arbitration cases to be decided, the Court embraced a narrow construction of subject-matter jurisdiction in arbitration matters. The March 31 decision reversed a Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that a federal trial court had jurisdiction under Sections 9 and 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act to confirm and overturn arbitration awards. The decision in Badgerow v. Walters, No. 20-1143 (available here) potentially gave the employee, who filed suit over workplace discrimination, a new shot at overturning an arbitration award in state court.
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So in today’s case, the Court also backs a worker trying to avoid arbitration, following similarly the 2019 New Prime v. Oliveira case, where Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his first Supreme Court arbitration opinion, read FAA Sec. 1 to exempt an independent contractor/interstate truck driver from arbitration. The Court has limited the exemption from FAA application to transportation workers “engaged in” interstate commerce only in Circuit City Stores Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105 (2001) (available at https://bit.ly/2HhwYLu). But since then, the Court has only recognized an FAA Sec. 1 exemption for an independent contractor—a long-haul truck driver—in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, 139 S. Ct. 532 (2019) (available here).
Today’s decision revisits the limited scope of the FAA Sec. 1 exemption, and says it applies to the original plaintiff/respondent in the case.
First, Justice Thomas notes that Saxon, who is a Southwest ramp supervisor located solely at Chicago Midway, belongs to a class of workers who physically load and unload cargo on and off airplanes, using plain language and textual analysis to put the respondent/original plaintiff in the FAA Sec. 1 exemption. He finds that such workers are “as a practical matter, part of the interstate transportation of goods.” (Citation omitted.)
He used the Circuit City Sec. 1 analysis holding that the exemption applies only to transportation workers to establish the backing for Saxon’s position, finding, “Cargo loaders exhibit this central feature of a transportation worker.”
In analyzing the nature of interstate commerce in a key part of the opinion, Thomas notes, “any class of workers that loads or unloads cargo on or off airplanes bound for a different State or country is ‘engaged in foreign or interstate commerce’”—a point sure to refocus attorneys on the employment arbitration policies of app-based commerce. Amazon, for example, strongly urged the Court to reverse and back Southwest in an amicus brief, available here. (See the docket link above for more amicus briefs supporting both sides.) In a footnote, the Court notes that the issues most important to delivery companies weren’t needed to be addressed to decide Southwest Airlines.
Still, Thomas stopped short of including all airline industry employees as “transportation workers” for purposes of the FAA Sec. 1 exemption, which states, “nothing herein contained shall apply to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”
In a painstaking dictionary analysis, Thomas notes that seamen and railroad workers are not industry-wide categories, and therefore don’t include the entire industry workforces. The implication is that a job-by-job, task-by-task analysis with the effects on interstate commerce, will be required for exempting workers from arbitration under FAA Sec. 1.
At the same time, the Thomas opinion rejects three Southwest points that sought to keep Saxon out of the exemption and require her to arbitrate under her employment agreement. Similar to the opinion’s rejection of the generalized interpretation of transportation workers that would include all airline workers by Saxon, the Court also states that the idea that the employee must ride on transportation in interstate commerce is too broad a reading of the FAA Sec. 1 language.
Next, Thomas notes that the goods that Saxon loaded only in Illinois were destined for interstate commerce, pointedly rejecting other Southwest-cited cases where the Court found localized activity was not in interstate commerce.
Finally, the opinion rejects a “statutory purpose” argument by Southwest, which claimed that the Seventh Circuit’s Sec. 1 interpretation hurts the pro-arbitration lean of the rest of the statute, particularly FAA Sec. 2, which “broadly requires courts to enforce arbitration agreements in any ‘contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce.'”
“Here,” countered Justice Thomas, “§1’s plain text suffices to show that airplane cargo loaders are exempt from the FAA’s scope, and we have no warrant to elevate vague invocations of statutory purpose over the words Congress chose.”
The opinion concludes, “Latrice Saxon frequently loads and unloads cargo on and off airplanes that travel in interstate commerce. She therefore belongs to a ‘class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce’ to which §1’s exemption applies.”
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While the nation awaits decisions on abortion and gun rights, the decision comes in an unprecedented time for arbitration at the Court. While there are usually one or two arbitration decisions per term, the Court has heard six cases—two consolidated–on how arbitration works during the 2021-2022 term, four of which were argued in March alone. Highlights of the cases can be found on CPR Speaks, here, including with the preview and argument reports for the three cases already decided, including today’s case. Detailed oral argument coverage for Southwest Airlines v. Saxon can be found on CPR Speaks here; and the preview with background can be found here. The remaining two 2021-2022 Supreme Court arbitration cases are expected to be decided before the current term ends at the end of this month.
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Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR; Knaap, a law student at Columbia University Law School in New York, is a 2022 CPR Summer intern.
[END]
One Declined, One Pending: Scotus Asked to Enforce an Arbitration Award against a Sovereign and an Oil Company
By R. Daniel Knaap
The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week declined to hear a case where Saudi Arabian landowners sought to enforce an arbitration award against the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., best known as Saudi Aramco.
The long-running matter, rooted in a nearly 90-year oil development land lease agreement, isn’t over. There’s a companion case from the same petitioners before the Court–against Chevron Corp., Saudi Aramco’s predecessor in the oil exploration and production deal–scheduled to be considered at a Supreme Court conference on June 16.
The Saudi Aramco case explores the limits of sovereign immunity in the face of a request to enforce an arbitral award against a government-tied entity. Now, at least in the Fifth Circuit’s view, the matter’s complex back story was sufficient to deny enforcement of the award against the state-owned enterprise in the absence of a 28 U.S.C. §1605 exception to foreign sovereign immunity.
In contrast, the Chevron case involves the issue of whether its predecessor’s arbitration agreement applies to the dispute.
The petitioners instituted two different enforcement proceedings regarding an $18 billion International Arbitration Center award against Saudi Aramco (Al-Qarqani v. Arab AMOCO, 2020 WL 6748031 (S.D. Tex., Nov. 17, 2020) and Chevron (Al-Qarqani v. Chevron Corp., 2019 WL 4729467 (N.D. Cal., Sept. 24, 2019).
Both the California and Texas U.S. District Courts refused to confirm the award. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the California district court, holding that the enforcement petition should be denied on the merits and not dismissed for failure to state a claim. Al-Qarqani v. Chevron Corp., 8 F.4th 1018 (9th Cir. 2021) (available at https://bit.ly/3zhYVvM). It further denied the petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc, Al-Qarqani v. Chevron Corp., 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 33976 (9th Cir. Cal., Nov. 16, 2021).
The case continues. A petition for certiorari in the nation’s top Court for Waleed Khalid Abu Al-Waleed Al Hood Al-Qarqani, et al. v. Chevron Corp., No. 21-1153, is pending and distributed for the June 16 conference.
In the Saudi Aramco case, the Fifth Circuit vacated the Southern District of Texas’s judgment, remanding with instructions that the case should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction since Saudi Aramco qualified as a foreign state immune from suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. §1603. Al-Waleed v. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., 19 F.4th 794 (5th Cir. 2021) (available at https://bit.ly/3zgvSZC).
The petition for certiorari in that case, Waleed Khalid Abu Al-Waleed Al Hood Al Qarqani, et al. v. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., No. 21-1335, was denied on May 31; Tuesday’s order declining cert is available here.
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According to the Supreme Court filings and lower court decisions, the case concerns a dispute between Saudi landowners and Saudi Aramco, which is Chevron’s successor in interest and fully owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 1933, an agreement was concluded between Chevron’s predecessor, Standard Oil Co. of California, and Saudi Arabia, which provided for rent payments to private landowners of oil-rich land, who were not a party to the agreement.
A deed of concession was concluded in 1949, which transferred the property from the landowners to Arabian American Oil Co., now Saudi Aramco. The petitioners, heirs of the landowners that were a party to the 1949 deed, claim that the land was leased, not sold, and that the 1933 agreement arbitration provision was imported into the 1949 deed. The petitioners initially sought back rent in Saudi Arabian courts. That proceeding took place in 2011, and a “Saudi Legal Committee” found that the 1949 deed was a sale, not a lease. 19 F.4th 794, 797.
The petitioners commenced arbitration proceedings at the International Arbitration Center in Egypt against Aramco and Chevron entities. Aramco rejected the arbitration and did not participate in the proceedings. The Chevron entities objected but nominated an arbitrator. Initially, the tribunal held that it lacked jurisdiction, but the proceedings were reopened by a panel with different members, resulting in an opinion in favor of the petitioners, awarding them $18 billion. Id. In the aftermath of the arbitration, an Egyptian court convicted two IAC administrators and three arbitrators of fraud, forgery, and other crimes relating to the second proceeding. Id.
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The Saudi Aramco petition presented the following questions: whether a foreign sovereign or instrumentality of a state that (1) is a signatory to the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards–the New York Convention–may assert the FSIA as a defense to enforcement of a foreign arbitral award, (2) accepts and accedes the United Nations Conventions on Jurisdictional Immunities amounts to an express waiver of sovereign immunity under the New York Convention, and (3) fails to timely file a cross appeal from a U.S. district court order that denied the sovereign’s assertion of the FSIA as a defense amounts to waiver and bars a subsequent request for a jurisdictional dismissal on appeal that is based on the merits.
Since certiorari was denied, the Fifth Circuit’s judgment stands. It held that Saudi Aramco is a foreign state under the FSIA since it was “a distinct legal entity incorporated under Saudi law, a majority of whose shares are owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and whose principal place of business is in Saudi Arabia” and thus “presumptively immune from suit in the courts of the United States.” 19 F.4th 794, 800. This immunity was not waived by the exceptions set out in FSIA’s 28 U.S.C. §1605(a). It was not waived under §1605(a)(1) because “the dispute underlying the arbitral award at issue … is clearly outside its scope,” since neither Saudi Aramco, its predecessor, nor the petitioners were party to the 1933 agreement. Id.
The immunity was also not waived under §1605(a)(2) by Saudi Aramco conducting business in the United States since the arbitration took place in Egypt and “did not cause a ‘direct effect’ in the United States.” Id., at 801.
The expropriation exception provided in §1605(a)(3) also does not apply because the action is to enforce an arbitral award, “not litigation of a property dispute involving international law.” Id.
Finally, immunity also was not waived under §1605(a)(6)’s arbitration agreement exception since neither Saudi Aramco, its predecessor, nor the petitioners were party to the 1933 agreement, and the 1949 deed did not mention arbitration nor did it refer to the 1933 agreement’s arbitration clause. Therefore, the Fifth Circuit concluded, the action should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction instead of denying the petition for enforcement. Id. at 801-2.
The cert denial allowing the Fifth Circuit decision to stand in turn appears to provide some answers to the petitioner’s questions presented.
First, a foreign sovereign or instrumentality of a state that is a signatory to the New York Convention may assert the FSIA as a defense to enforcement of a foreign arbitral award. Second, a foreign sovereign or instrumentality of a state that accepts and accedes the United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities does not amount to an express waiver of sovereign immunity under the New York Convention. The third question, however, was not explicitly addressed since the appeal was found to be timely.
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The author, a law student at Columbia University Law School in New York, is a 2022 CPR Summer intern.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Rates-Review Arbitration Request, Sending Customer Dispute to Court
By Russ Bleemer
The U.S. Supreme Court this morning declined to hear a case on whether the nearly century-old Federal Arbitration Act preempts state law—this time, a clash with Tennessee common law on contracts.
The FAA has shown a lot of muscle in the U.S. Supreme Court over its history, and it’s rarely displaced. Petitioners seeking to avoid arbitration under a state law are almost always sent to arbitration.
That was not outcome in today’s cert denial in Branch Banking and Trust Co. v. Sevier County Schools Federal Credit Union, et al., No. 21-365. The matter also was about arbitrability–not on the merits of a dispute as to whether the respondents get the money market interest rate on their investment guaranteed by a predecessor of the petitioner bank, which wanted the case over its rate-drop arbitrated.
The petitioner bank had required account holders to arbitrate disputes by amending its agreement with the fund holders after it had purchased the predecessor bank.
The respondent account holders’ argument–successful in the federal appeals court at Sevier Cnty. Sch. Fed. Credit Union v. Branch Banking & Tr. Co., 990 F.3d 470 (6th Cir. 2021) (available at https://bit.ly/3K7BxnV)–was straightforward: The so-called FAA Sec. 2 Savings clause (an arbitration agreement “shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract “) backs a state-law challenge to the contract.
And the Sixth Circuit held that there was a lack of mutual assent to the arbitration clause, which is required under Tennessee law. The bank services agreements “in question are clearly contracts of adhesion,” stated the Sixth Circuit opinion.
That opinion stands as a result of the today’s cert denial.
The appeals court criticized the petitioner bank’s unilateral imposition of the arbitration clause and, while noting that the rate promised two decades ago was several times higher than current available rates, it agreed with the plaintiffs’ analysis that the bank couldn’t require ADR where there had been none in the original bank services agreement.
The bank countered in its Supreme Court cert petition, “The Sixth Circuit’s decision is directly at odds with this Court’s recent arbitration decisions and with the law in other courts.”
The issue formally presented to the Court by the petitioner bank was
Whether the Federal Arbitration Act displaces a state common-law rule forbidding companies from adding an arbitration requirement to their standard form contract with customers unless the contract already includes a dispute-resolution clause.
The bank noted in its petition,
The Sixth Circuit’s adoption of a rule that singles out arbitration agreements and subjects them to heightened contract-formation requirements conflicts with [Kindred Nursing Ctrs. Ltd. P’ship v. Clark, 137 S. Ct. 1421, 1424 (2017) (available at https://bit.ly/3GojOWE), which struck a Kentucky rule that “singles out arbitration agreements for disfavored treatment”] and other recent precedents from this Court holding that arbitration agreements cannot be “disfavored” or subjected to more demanding requirements than other contracts. The panel opinion did not cite, let alone distinguish, any of this Court’s modern FAA precedents.
Today’s order denying cert, available here, granted a motion by the American Bankers Association to file an amicus brief, which strongly urged the Court to take the case and reverse the Sixth Circuit. That brief is available at the Court’s docket page linked above (directly here).
The original plaintiffs’ Sixth Circuit success in avoiding arbitration is a rarity once cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s top Court has taken six arbitration cases over five arguments in the current term. Two have been decided, and three cases, all argued in March’s second half, await decision. Details on the decisions, arguments, and case previews can be found on this blog by searching on the U.S. Supreme Court here.
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Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR.
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Supreme Court Rejects Prejudice Requirement for Defeating a Motion to Compel Arbitration
By R. Daniel Knaap & Russ Bleemer
The U.S. Supreme Court backed a Taco Bell worker resisting her employer’s motion to compel arbitration this morning when it ruled, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, that a party need not show it was prejudiced by the moving party’s actions.
The decision vacated an Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that arbitration was not waived because the resisting party did not prove it was prejudiced by the adversary’s actions.
Morgan v. Sundance, Inc., No. 21-328 (today’s decision available at https://bit.ly/3NywXj5), means that parties waive their right to compel arbitration based on their actions, not on the judicially established prejudice requirement—a plain reading of the Federal Arbitration Act.
“Did Sundance knowingly relinquish the right to arbitrate by acting inconsistently with that right?” writes Kagan, framing the state of the law on the inquiry for courts. The opinion concludes: “On remand, the Court of Appeals may resolve that question, or determine that a different procedural framework (such as forfeiture) is appropriate. The Court’s sole holding today is that it may not make up a new procedural rule based on the FAA’s ‘policy favoring arbitration.’”
The decision resolves a 9-2 circuit split; nine jurisdictions require a party resisting arbitration under waiver to prove that they have been prejudiced, while two jurisdictions do not have such a requirement. Today’s opinion sides with the minority position, rejecting the idea that the FAA authorizes federal courts to invent arbitration-specific procedural rules, holding that the “federal policy is about treating arbitration contracts like all others, not about fostering arbitration.”
Morgan is the second arbitration opinion of the term, and the second by Kagan invoking a plain reading of the FAA that backs the plaintiff’s position. Today’s 9-0 decision was preceded by Badgerow v. Walters, No. 20-1143 (available here), an 8-1 March 31 decision rejecting FAA jurisdiction in federal courts for statutory sections on enforcing and challenging awards. For more on Badgerow, see Russ Bleemer & Andrew Ling, “Supreme Court Rejects Federal FAA Jurisdiction for Arbitration Award Enforcement and Challenges, (March 31) (available at https://bit.ly/3wB2hZ8).
In fact, three more decisions are pending. Morgan is one of four arbitration cases argued in the nation’s top Court in the second half of March. Decisions on the other three cases are pending. More information can be found by inserting “Supreme Court” in the box in the upper right of this page to search CPR Speaks, or by clicking here.
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In Morgan, Justice Kagan takes both narrow and broad views of different arbitration points.
First, the opinion narrowly declines to tackle a variety of analogous analysis points on state law in assessing waiver, focusing the decision on the Eighth Circuit’s approach that has “generally resolved cases like this one as a matter of federal law, using the terminology of waiver.”
“For today,” writes Kagan, “we assume without deciding they are right to do so.”
After declining to rule fully on that approach, the opinion said that instead it looked solely at “the next step,” whether federal courts “may create arbitration-specific variants of federal procedural rules, like those concerning waiver, based on the FAA’s ‘policy favoring arbitration.’”
That made the case an easy call. The Court agreed in just seven pages that the answer is a hard no on adding a prejudice requirement to the inquiry of whether the party knew it was subject to arbitration, and acted inconsistently with that right.
The opinion notes that “in demanding . . . proof [of prejudice] before finding the waiver of an arbitration right, the Eighth Circuit applies a rule found nowhere else—consider it a bespoke rule of waiver for arbitration.”
Instead, the Court adopted the views of the Seventh and District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals that there is no prejudice requirement.
But more broadly, Kagan also used the opinion to tamp down perceptions of the Court’s tilt to arbitration. The effect of the clarification is an unmistakable unanimous Court acknowledgment to criticism that it has elevated arbitration over courtroom litigation.
The opinion returned to seminal cases to explain—in the opinion’s view, re-emphasize–that the Court’s policy favoring arbitration–emanating from Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Construction Corp., 460 U.S. 1 (1983)–“does not authorize federal courts to invent special, arbitration-preferring procedural rules.” Nor does it allow courts to “devise novel rules to favor arbitration over litigation,” referring to Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213, 218–221 (1985).
Citing Granite Rock Co. v. Teamsters, 561 U. S. 287, 302 (2010), Kagan writes that the policy “is merely an acknowledgment of the FAA’s commitment to overrule the judiciary’s longstanding refusal to enforce agreements to arbitrate and to place such agreements upon the same footing as other contracts.”
She then added the Prima Paint pronouncement: “The policy is to make ‘arbitration agreements as enforceable as other contracts, but not more so.’” Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 395, 404, n. 12 (1967).
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Morgan involves a Fair Labor Standards Act suit brought by petitioner Robyn Morgan against Sundance Inc., which owns 150 Taco Bell franchises throughout the United States, including the Iowa franchise where Morgan was an hourly employee. The complaint alleged that Sundance did not fully compensate its employees for the hours they worked. Although the suit was initially filed as a nationwide collective action, Michigan hourly employees were excluded because they were able to join a similar action filed two years earlier in Michigan’s Eastern U.S. District Court–the so-called Wood action.
The Morgan and Wood plaintiffs engaged in joint mediation with Sundance in April 2019. The mediation settled the Wood action, but not Morgan. Sundance then moved to compel individual arbitration of Morgan’s claims in May 2019, invoking the arbitration provision in the employment contract.
Morgan opposed this, arguing that Sundance had waived its right to compel arbitration by engaging in litigation. The Iowa Southern U.S. District Court denied the motion, finding that Morgan was prejudiced by having to defend to Sundance’s earlier motion to dismiss and by spending time and resources on the class-wide mediation instead of individual arbitration.
The oral arguments were discussed in detail at “Supreme Court Reviews the Role of Prejudice to a Party in Determining Arbitration Waiver,” CPR Speaks (March 21) (available here).
For more on the history of the case, see Mark Kantor, “U.S. Supreme Court Adds an Arbitration Issue: Is Proof of Prejudice Needed to Defeat a Motion to Compel?” CPR Speaks (November 15, 2021) (available here), and Russ Bleemer, “The Supreme Court’s Six-Pack Is Set to Refine Arbitration Practice,” 40 Alternatives 17 (February 2022) (available here).
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Knaap, a law student at Columbia University Law School in New York, is a 2022 CPR Summer intern. Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR.
[END]
Supreme Court Rejects Federal FAA Jurisdiction for Arbitration Award Enforcement and Challenges
By Russ Bleemer & Andrew Ling
The Supreme Court embraced a narrow construction of subject-matter jurisdiction in arbitration matters today, reversing a Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that a federal trial court had jurisdiction under Sections 9 and 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act to confirm and overturn arbitration awards.
Badgerow v. Walters, No. 20-1143 (today’s decision available here), means that award enforcement processes and efforts to overturn tribunal decisions will continue to be directed state courts as a matter of state contractual law. In other words, FAA Sections 9 and 10 jurisdiction is in state court, and the “look through” federal court jurisdiction analysis steps accorded to FAA Sec. 4–which provides federal courts jurisdiction on getting parties into arbitration–will not apply.
The Fifth Circuit had said that federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction to confirm or vacate an arbitration award under FAA Sections 9 and 10 when the underlying dispute was on a federal question. The opinion, now reversed, was based on Vaden v. Discover Bank, 556 U. S. 49 (2009) (available at https://bit.ly/3Ca42MA), where the Supreme Court assessed whether there was a jurisdictional basis to decide an FAA Section 4 petition to compel arbitration.
Today’s decision on the arcane subject of jurisdiction clarifies Vaden‘s application with a textual analysis on how FAA Sec. 4 differs from Sections 9 and 10.
The decision comes amidst an unprecedented time for arbitration at the Court. While Court watchers’ eyes have been on the confirmation process for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to succeed retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer, over the past 10 days, the Court has heard four oral arguments covering five arbitration cases. Highlights of the cases can be found on CPR Speaks, here. The March arbitration cases are expected to be decided before the current Supreme Court term ends in June.
This morning’s 8-1 decision, written by Justice Elena Kagan, declines to extend Vaden to the FAA’s award enforcement and challenge sections. It states, “The question presented here is whether that same ‘look-through’ approach to jurisdiction applies to requests to confirm or vacate arbitral awards under the FAA’s Sections 9 and 10. We hold it does not. Those sections lack Section 4’s distinctive language directing a look-through, on which Vaden rested. Without that statutory instruction, a court may look only to the application actually submitted to it in assessing its jurisdiction.”
Badgerow involves a FINRA arbitration brought by Louisiana petitioner Denise Badgerow, a financial adviser, against the principals of her former employer, REJ Properties Inc. She maintains she was harassed on the job, and filed a complaint with FINRA claiming her employer and its principals violated federal securities laws, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and the rules of FINRA, which regulates the actions of broker-dealers.
After losing the arbitration, Badgerow brought a new claim in a Louisiana state court to vacate the FINRA award that dismissed her complaints. The principals removed the case to Louisiana Eastern U.S. District Court, and both the District Court and the Fifth Circuit upheld federal jurisdiction. REJ Properties and its parent, Ameriprise Financial Inc., an NYSE-traded financial services company, were not part of the state court claim nor today’s Supreme Court decision.
The decision this morning is surprising in light of the Nov. 2 oral arguments. Badgerow’s attorney, Daniel L. Geyser, a Dallas partner in Haynes and Boone, faced strong skepticism from the Court on why the sections on enforcing and overturning awards should be treated differently for federal jurisdictional purposes than the earlier section on compelling parties into arbitration. See CPR Speaks coverage here.
But the Court today accepted Geyser’s argument that the Sec. 4 language, which specifically says that parties seeking to compel arbitration proceed in federal court, isn’t present for the award enforcement and challenges of the statute’s later sections. “We have no warrant to redline the FAA, importing Section
4’s consequential language into provisions containing nothing like it,” wrote Kagan, adding, “Congress could have replicated Section 4’s look-through instruction in Sections 9 and 10.”
In an email, Geyser writes, “We’re very grateful for the win, and delighted for our client. We think the Court’s opinion is an important contribution in clarifying the jurisdiction rules for everyday filings under the FAA.”
Walters’ attorney, Washington, D.C.-based Williams & Connolly partner Lisa Blatt, did not immediately reply to an email request for comment.
The opinion concludes noting that “Congress chose to respect the capacity of state courts to properly enforce arbitral awards. In our turn, we must respect that evident congressional choice.”
The Court used the opinion to resolve a circuit split and clarify that the “look through” test needs textual support in the FAA. Under Vaden, a federal court should “look through” the Federal Arbitration Act claims to the “substantive controversy” to determine if they could have been brought in federal court for disputes under Section 4.
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Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s 13-page dissent said that the divergent jurisdiction tests for the different Federal Arbitration Act sections was confusing. “Although this result may be consistent with the statute’s text,” he wrote, “it creates what Vaden feared—curious consequences and artificial distinctions. . . . It also creates what I fear will be consequences that are overly complex and impractical.”
Instead, Breyer writes that he would use the Vaden look-through approach “to determine jurisdiction under each of the FAA’s related provisions—Sections 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 11.”
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For more on the procedural history of the case, see Bryanna Rainwater & Russ Bleemer, “Next at the Supreme Court: Badgerow’s Attempt to Reevaluate FAA Jurisdiction,” CPR Speaks (September 15) (available here).
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Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for CPR at altnewsletter.com. Ling, a third-year law student at the University of Texas School of Law, in Austin, Texas, is a CPR 2022 Spring Intern.
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CPR Speaks 