mandatory arbitration

Supreme Court Limits California’s PAGA Law on Employment Claims, Preempting It in Part under the Federal Arbitration Act

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

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]

Adding a Claim, and Avoiding Arbitration:  The Supreme Court Reviews California’s Private Attorneys General Act

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Russ Bleemer

The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday examined California’s law allowing individuals to stand in for the state and file suits on behalf of coworkers against their employers even when they have arbitration obligations in the employment contracts.

California’s Private Attorneys General Act unquestionably has affected individualized arbitration processes under the Federal Arbitration Act, as a result of the California Supreme Case of Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles LLC, 327 P.3d 129 (Cal. 2014) (available at https://stanford.io/3ILcTY5), which authorizes California employees to avoid mandatory arbitration employment contracts requirements by filing representative suits under the PAGA law.  The Court had held that PAGA was not preempted by the FAA.

Employers have said that tens of thousands of suits have been filed under PAGA by employees with arbitration contracts.

That’s not a good look for a Supreme Court which has struck other laws interfering with the FAA, and was a problem this morning for the Court.  The history of the cases that authorized mandatory individualized arbitration with waivers of class actions–AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) (available at http://bit.ly/2VcI4mi), and the case that extended the authorization to employment cases that followed, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S.Ct. 1612 (2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2Y66dwK)–loomed over the arguments.  

California employers want to halt the law being used as an end-run around their workplace dispute programs, which has been used to force them into class processes they seek to avoid with mandatory arbitration dispute resolution procedures. Employment attorneys and consumer advocates have countered that PAGA is a crucial state law that allows people to vindicate their employment rights.

The Court wasn’t called upon to remove the PAGA law today. But there also likely won’t be a compelling reason to keep PAGA claims out of arbitration, or at least, allow the possibility, even though the agreement at issue barred them entirely. Ultimately, the decision will focus on the Court’s Concepcion and Epic Systems arbitration-supportive history.

As a result, in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana, No. 20-1573, the advocates and the Court wrestled with the nature of the PAGA claim—as a procedural move that allows for a different legal claim or claims, or a substantive right under state law.

The Concepcion and Epic Systems cases divided the Court 5-4. It’s a different Court today, with wider ideological lines, but the Court’s three liberal justices are still inclined to back class processes. The justices who were in opposition in Concepcion and Epic Systems—Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—were most animated today.  They provided the toughest questions to Viking River’s Paul D. Clement, a former U.S. Solicitor General and a partner in the Washington office of Kirkland & Ellis, asking him to justify how the Court can police the laws California provides to its residents for use in vindicating their rights.

The Court’s conservatives mostly took a backseat this morning.

Clement, arguing in the nation’s top Court for the second time in nine days in an arbitration case (details on the previous case on CPR Speaks here), conceded that the state had properly installed the PAGA law, but also insisted that Concepcion had been violated.  He said the law violations that were the basis of original plaintiff Angie Moriana’s claims would have been easily addressed by an arbitrator, even with an award going to the state under PAGA.  But forcing the PAGA claim into courts opens up a flood of claims on behalf of many potential workplace plaintiffs without the guidance of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23’s protections for defendants.

Moriana’s lawyer, Scott Nelson, an attorney at Washington, D.C.’s Public Citizen Litigation Group, faced challenges on the FAA end-run by PAGA users by telling the Court that his client’s objection was to Viking River arbitration provisions that explicitly required waiving PAGA claims altogether. Nothing in the FAA, he said, requires the enforcement of such an agreement.

* * *

Paul Clement in his petitioner’s argument faced an immediate challenge from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said that respondent Moriana wasn’t acting for herself, but as a delegee of the California Attorney General, securing a recovery for the state and her fellow employees. Clement responded that the setting the chief justice described wasn’t “the critical feature of PAGA.” He objected to Moriana bringing the PAGA claim on the part of the Viking River sales force as a whole, later explaining that the law’s use contravened the customary nature of arbitration as an individualized process.

Justice Elena Kagan interrupted, and confronted Clement with an objection echoed by her fellow liberal justices. The state, said Kagan, has determined that it needed law for policing that it did not have the capacity to do on its own.  “So this is a state decision to enforce its own labor laws in a particular kind of way that the state has decided is the only way to adequately do it,” she said.

Clement agreed: “At the end of the day, that’s right,” he said. But he insisted that Concepcion set the path for parties to agree to arbitrate such disputes, and the state must conform to the Court’s decision.

Kagan asked whether he thought there would have been views when the FAA was passed in 1925 that the then-new law would preclude the state from structuring its own law enforcement for its labor laws. Clement conceded it was an interesting question what sort of class actions could have been foreseen, but he said, “[C]ertainly, if we take Concepcion and Epic [Systems and Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019) (available at http://bit.ly/2GxwFbC)] as a given, and nobody has asked [the Court] to overrule those cases here. . . This Court said that state policy had to yield. I don’t think the state policy here is any more sacrosanct.”

Clement also noted for the first of repeated mentions that the California law is an outlier. While other states have considered the California law, he said its form is unique, and Clement emphasized that no other states joined in support of California as an amicus. (For details on the 22 amicus filers, as well as case background, see yesterday’s CPR Speaks preview of the argument, here.)

Clement lamented PAGA’s similarity to class actions on two points in particular, the potential dollar amounts that the claims put before the defendants, and the burdensome class discovery. Given the high stakes and the discovery, he said, “if I’m a defendant and you’re telling me I can’t escape this kind of aggregate litigation, . . . then I’m going to pick litigation every time, because I get lots of additional judicial review”  and remedies, and the result means that “arbitration is going to whither on the vine.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor disputed Clement’s characterization of arbitration claim handling, noting that arbitration historically has handled complex cases, and the Court has backed its use in cases involving racketeering, antitrust and disparate impact claims. She said it’s parties that choose whether to have arbitration class actions, not the Court.

Clement countered that the key question, as raised by Justice Kagan, wasn’t complexity but it was the operation of the PAGA statute as the mechanism providing a cause of action and specifying penalties under it. He said that the FAA doesn’t preempt the statute itself, but the arbitration right under the contract has been cut off.  

Sotomayor pointedly stated that the goal was destroying the state’s mechanism for enforcing labor law violations, and Clement pushed back and said that the plaintiff’s claims could be brought in arbitration. He later noted that the critical part wasn’t calling PAGA a state claim, nor the classification of the claim as a substantive or procedural right, but the fact that the state claim let in many claims that are not customary in bilateral arbitration.

* * *

Public Citizen’s Scott Nelson said in response to the chief justice that the multiple claims of his client, respondent Angie Moriana, could be arbitrated as to her individual claims, and she could pursue others  on her own but under PAGA on behalf of the state and other workers.

He told Justice Amy Coney Barrett in response to a question that the most important part of his client’s claim wasn’t just that the PAGA claim belongs to California, but also that the FAA can’t override the right to pursue the claim that California has provided.

Nelson maintained that the PAGA action is not the kind of aggregated multiparty action on which the Court focused in Concepcion and Epic Systems, but rather the state’s right to civil penalties through its individual representatives. PAGA, he explained, can be brought by the state’s representative as an equally bilateral arbitration or litigation between the representative and the defendant.

The agreement waives Moriana’s right to pursue a statutory remedy, emphasized Nelson.  But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was skeptical, and said that under the arbitration agreement, “she doesn’t have a right to pursue a substantive claim in court, but she does have a right to pursue the substantive claim just in arbitration. I thought that was sort of at the core of our precedents.  . . . Arbitration gets at the remedy. ”

Nelson responded that “the substantive claim . . . is the claim to recover civil penalties for these violations which are available only via PAGA, and the arbitration agreement explicitly prohibits the assertion” of a PAGA claim and a representative claim.  He said that the California Labor Code claim could be pursued in arbitration, but not the PAGA claim for damages.

Justice Breyer pressed Nelson on whether the California rule had special implications for arbitration, and whether the PAGA case could be brought in court if the Supreme Court held PAGA targeted arbitration. Nelson responded that if the law “is inconsistent with the nature of arbitration, then that’s what creates a problem.  . . . [W]hat the state has said is for contracts, whether they are part of an arbitration agreement or not, you can’t waive the right to bring a PAGA claim in an employment agreement before the claim arises. So [it] applies to every kind of agreement.”  

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concluded Scott Nelson’s argument by asking him to react to Viking River attorney Paul Clement’s point that California is alone on having the PAGA law. “It’s certainly true that California is the only state that has this mechanism,” said Nelson, adding “It’s somewhat ironic that one of the arguments made in favor of this Court’s review was that if you let California do it, everyone will do it. Now California is the only state that wants to do it.”

* * *

In his rebuttal, Kirkland & Ellis’s Clement said that the big problem with the law was that the representative could submit a claim on behalf of all of the employees “for all these disparate violations,” and in considering the scope of such an action, “then there is nothing left of Concepcion. ….. It’s too naked a circumvention.”

He re-emphasized his point about California’s outlier status in producing laws that are anti-arbitration. He noted that the substantive-procedural distinction can’t be used to avoid Concepcion/Epic Systems arbitration requirements.

Clement’s last point was on what he termed “practicalities.” He said that if respondent Moriana’s only claim was on timing of her final paycheck, “an arbitrator could dispatch that case in about an hour,” cutting her a check, and cutting a check for the state as well. But to do that in arbitration with many claims would require a claims administrator.  

Before Concepcion, he said, little attention was paid to the 2004 PAGA statute. Now, since Concepcion, Clement concluded, 17 PAGA complaints are being filed daily.

* * *

The official question presented to the Court today is

Whether the Federal Arbitration Act requires enforcement of a bilateral arbitration agreement providing that an employee cannot raise representative claims, including under PAGA.

A decision is expected before the current Court term concludes at the end of June. For more background on Viking River, see Mark Kantor, “US Supreme Court to Review Whether Private Attorney General Action Can Be Waived by an Arbitration Agreement,” CPR Speaks (Dec. 16) (available here).

Today’s case concludes a run of four U.S. Supreme Court arbitration cases in nine days. Previews and analysis of the cases can be found on this CPR Speaks blog using the search function in the upper right, and searching for “Supreme Court” and/or “arbitration.” An overview and an analysis of the 2021-2022 Supreme Court arbitration docket, including the cases argued over the past two weeks, can be found at Russ Bleemer, “The Supreme Court’s Six-Pack Is Set to Refine Arbitration Practice,” 40 Alternatives 17 (February 2022), and Imre Szalai, “Not Like Other Cases: SCOTUS’s Unique Arbitration Year,” 40 Alternatives 28 (February 2022), both available for free at https://bit.ly/3GDEJEK. Argument coverage is available on CPR Speaks, here.

The audio stream archive and the transcript of the March 30 Viking River Cruises argument can be found on the Supreme Court’s website here.

* * *

The author edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation at altnewsletter.com for CPR.

[END]

The Fight over Arbitration and Class-Action Access Returns to the Supreme Court Tomorrow on California’s PAGA Law

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Russ Bleemer

Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court oral argument in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana, No. 20-1573, will sort the relationship between the Federal Arbitration Act and California’s Private Attorneys General Act. The case concludes a Supreme Court run of five arbitration cases in four oral arguments over nine days.

The Court tomorrow will likely revisit its extensive history on federal preemption of state laws in deciding whether the state law will continue to allow individuals with arbitration agreements to file suits in courts.

The issue is crucial for California employers, which have argued that the law is used as an end-run around their workplace dispute programs that forces them into class processes they seek to avoid with mandatory arbitration dispute resolution procedures.

Employment attorneys and consumer advocates have countered that PAGA is an essential state law that allows people to vindicate their employment rights.

The result is a return to the nation’s top Court on the broad issue of arbitration fairness. The fight over whether the California representative-class PAGA cases may continue in the place of individual arbitration—business groups say there have been tens of thousands of such cases—is also an amicus battleground among the nation’s leading business and consumer advocacy groups.  The amicus participants include business and consumer groups that have faced off in Washington, D.C., and federal and state courts nationwide on arbitration fairness issues for decades.

There are 22 amicus briefs filed.  Friend of the Court briefs on behalf of business petitioner Viking River Cruises, which is trying to overturn the PAGA law, have been filed by the California New Car Dealers Association; the Washington Legal Foundation and Atlantic Legal Foundation, nonprofit public interest law firms focusing on free marker principles, both based in Washington; the Employers Group, a 126-year-old California-based industry organization; Uber Technologies Inc. and Postmates LLC; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, California Chamber of Commerce, and the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center; the Retail Litigation Center Inc. and the National Retail Federation; the California Employment Law Council, a 29-year-old nonprofit that lobbies and advocates on behalf of employers; the Civil Justice Association of California, a 43-year-old tort reform organization; the Restaurant Law Center; and the California Business and Industrial Alliance, a five-year-old trade group of business executives and entrepreneurs formed specifically to fight the PAGA law.

Backing Angie Moriana, a sales representative for the cruise line who brought several wage claims against her employer, are consumer and employee association representatives including the National Academy of Arbitrators, a 75-year-old nonprofit professional organization; Steve Chow (who, according to his filing, is “a first-generation American who owns and operates three convenience stores in the San Francisco Bay Area” and who “writes in favor of [PAGA]. Mr. Chow cannot afford to require his few employees to arbitrate, and the [FAA] might not apply to his small business anyway.”); the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); the California Rural Legal Assistance Inc. (a 56-year-old legal services organization) and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (a legal nonprofit that represents California immigrant farmworkers and others in class processes, including PAGA cases, in front of state agencies); a group of 10 civil procedure and arbitration law professors; the California Employment Lawyers’ Association, the National Employment Law Project, and the National Employment Lawyers’ Association, all nonprofit worker advocacy groups; Public Justice, a Washington nonprofit law firm and consumer advocacy group; the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund (a 36-year-old Washington, D.C., nonprofit “dedicated to preserving effective anti-fraud legislation at the federal and state levels,” focusing on whistleblower statutes); the State of California (which in its statement of interest in the case notes, “In the State’s experience, PAGA is an important law enforcement tool enacted to address serious and widespread violations of the California Labor Code”); “Arbitration Scholar” Imre Stephen Szalai, a Loyola University New Orleans College of Law professor filing his own brief [Szalai recently wrote on the Court’s arbitration caseload for CPR Speaks’ publisher CPR’s monthly newsletter Alternatives; see link below]; Tracy Chen, “in Her Representative Proxy Capacity on Behalf of the State of California” (noting in her interest statement that she is “a proxy of the State of California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency . . .pursuant to PAGA” and a plaintiff in a securities industry class action case seeking employer reimbursement of investment adviser fees), and the American Association for Justice, the Washington-based trial lawyers’ professional organization.

The PAGA law enables an individual employee to seek a court judgment for breach of California labor laws as a “private attorney general” on behalf of the state of California.

The question presented to the Supreme Court is

Whether the Federal Arbitration Act requires enforcement of a bilateral arbitration agreement providing that an employee cannot raise representative claims, including under PAGA.

The controversial California Supreme Case of Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles LLC, 327 P.3d 129 (Cal. 2014) (available at https://stanford.io/3ILcTY5), authorizes California employees to avoid mandatory arbitration employment contracts requirements by filing representatives suits under the PAGA law.  California’s top court held that PAGA was not preempted by the FAA.

As the Supreme Court itself points out in a prelude to the Viking River Cruises question presented, Iskanian has authorized Californians to avoid the Court’s ruling backing mandatory individualized arbitration in consumer cases in the seminal matter preceding Iskanian, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) (available at http://bit.ly/2VcI4mi), and the case that extended the authorization to employment cases that followed, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S.Ct. 1612 (2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2Y66dwK).

For more background on Viking River, see Mark Kantor, “US Supreme Court to Review Whether Private Attorney General Action Can Be Waived by an Arbitration Agreement,” CPR Speaks (Dec. 16) (available here).

The audio stream of Wednesday’s argument will be available on the U.S. Supreme Court’s home page at 10 a.m. Eastern, here. Tomorrow afternoon, the Court will make available an archive of the stream and a transcript of the argument here.

* * *

A preview and an analysis of the 2021-2022 Supreme Court arbitration docket, including the cases argued this week and last week, can be found at Russ Bleemer, “The Supreme Court’s Six-Pack Is Set to Refine Arbitration Practice,” 40 Alternatives 17 (February 2022), and Imre Szalai, “Not Like Other Cases: SCOTUS’s Unique Arbitration Year,” 40 Alternatives 28 (February 2022), both available for free at https://bit.ly/3GDEJEK. Argument coverage is available on CPR Speaks, here.

* * *

The author edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation at altnewsletter.com for CPR.

[END]

House Subcommittee Introduces Bill that Would Restrict Arbitration

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Tamia Sutherland

The House Committee on Education and Labor’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions held a Nov. 4 hearing on employment arbitration to introduce the “Restoring Justice for Workers Act.” The meeting and bill was presented by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, D., Va., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D., N.Y.

The text of the Restoring Justice for Workers Act is available here. The act would

  • prohibit pre-dispute arbitration agreements that require arbitration of work disputes;
  • prohibit retaliation against workers for refusing to arbitrate work disputes;
  • provide protections to ensure that post-dispute arbitration agreements are truly voluntary and with the informed consent of workers;
  • amend the National Labor Relations Act to prohibit agreements and practices that interfere with employees’ right to engage in concerted activity regarding work disputes, and
  • reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Epic Systems Corp. v Lewis, available here. (Earlier this week, the Court agreed to hear a case that could clarify the extent of the seminal case’s application. For more, see Mark Kantor, “U.S. Supreme Court Adds an Arbitration Issue: Is Proof of Prejudice Needed to Defeat a Motion to Compel?” CPR Speaks (Nov. 15) (available at https://bit.ly/3FnfyGd).

The subcommittee meeting, “Closing the Courthouse Doors: The Injustice of Forced Arbitration Agreements,” began with an opening statement from committee Chairman Mark DeSaulnier, D., Calif. Senior Georgia Republican committee  Rick W. Allan gave an opening statement, and then four witnesses provided testimony:

  1. Alexander Colvin, Dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University;
  2. Glenda Perez, Former Implementation Set-Up Representative at Cigna;
  3. G. Roger King, Senior Labor and Employment Counsel at the Arlington, Va.-based HR Policy Association, a nonprofit membership group of “over 390 large” corporations’ chief human resource officers; and
  4. Kalpana Kotagal, a Partner in Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll’s Washington, D.C., office.

First, Chairman DeSaulnier began by introducing the topic of “forced arbitration” agreements and collective action waivers, explaining that for many employees, employment documents “include an arbitration clause, hidden in the fine print,” which requires workers to sign the document or forgo employment.

Next, he provided data to support the assertion that the use of these agreements is widespread. He explained that “in 1990, 2.1% of non-union employees had an arbitration clause in their employment contracts . . . [and in] 2018, nearly 60% of all nonunionized private-sector employees were covered by forced arbitration agreements.”

Chairman DeSaulnier provided other examples of what he described as unfair practices and, finally, introduced the Restoring Justice for Workers Act as a solution.

Rep. Allan countered in his opening statement that the act is another instance of heavy-handed government reach that will be burdensome to employers and unfairly target job creators. Moreover, he asserted that the act would delay justice and continue to clog an already overrun court system.

Prof. Colvin, a longtime critic of mandatory arbitration processes, was the first witness to provide testimony. He provided statistics from his studies, cited at his link above, to show the increase use of arbitration, and how employees do worse in arbitration as opposed to the court. He also discussed how employees who use the arbitration process for the first time are at a structural disadvantage to companies who repeatedly use the process.

Next, Glenda Perez provided a personal account of her struggles with the arbitration process without a lawyer. Perez reported that she and her husband worked for Bloomfield, Conn.-based insurer Cigna from October 2013 to  July 2017. In April 2017, Cigna put her on a performance correction plan for work “errors” after meeting with her team on pharmacy benefits.

Her husband, a Cigna analyst, found evidence of errors by white women but none by his wife, according to Perez’s witness statement. She filed a discrimination complaint with Cigna’ human resources department. Typically, a full investigation takes 60 days, she reported, but in her statement, Perez said her investigation took one day, with human resources backing her manager’s claim. Two months later, she was fired.

Perez wanted to file a claim for discrimination and retaliation, but could not find an attorney to represent her in mandatory arbitration. She said she was forced to drive to a law library to do research while also taking care of her three children and looking for a new job. She claimed it took several months to choose an arbitrator.

Moreover, Perez reported, the arbitrator selected may have had a conflict of interest that was not disclosed. Perez’s testimony focused on arbitrator’s lack of impartiality. She reported that there are photos online of the arbitrator, and Cigna’s attorney, at the arbitrator’s 50th birthday party, which she filed with her committee testimony. Additionally, she testified, the arbitrator formerly worked for the firm representing Cigna and had Cigna’s counsel as a reference on his CV.

The arbitrator denied Perez’s request for materials to prove her case as Cigna claimed it would cost more than $1 million to retrieve “even though,” she said, “I was only requesting my employee personal profile.” Cigna moved for summary judgment, and then the arbitrator ruled in favor of Cigna, and canceled a hearing that had been scheduled. When Perez filed a motion to vacate the decision in court, she said Cigna fired her husband.

HR Policy Association attorney Roger King said that two of the legislation’s primary objectives are big mistakes and are a substantial overreach of congressional action. He explained that completely eliminating pre-dispute arbitration was a mistake, and a total prohibition on class-action waivers would be burdensome. Also, in response to Glenda Perez’s testimony, he asserted that generally, arbitrators are ethical.

Finally, Kalpana Kotagal testified that the justification for forced arbitration is predicated on myths because (1) there is no equal bargaining power in most forced arbitrations, (2) it burdens those who are already marginalized, (3) it is not speedy, and (4) it deters workers from bringing claims.

The meeting concluded with a Q&A from other committee members.

* * *

A video of the hearing, and witness statements, is available here. The Congressional repository page for the event can be found here.

* * *

The author, a second-year law student at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., is a CPR 2021 Fall Intern.

[END]

Gov Cuomo Signs New Legislation Barring Use of Mandatory Arbitration to Resolve Workplace Discrimination and Harassment in New York State

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Anna Hershenberg

As expected, on Monday, August 12, 2019, Governor Cuomo signed new legislation that, among other things, purports to bar the use of mandatory arbitration to resolve discrimination and harassment cases in the workplace in New York state.

The prior version of this law, New York CPLR § 7515, which went into effect last year, aimed to prohibit mandatory arbitration of workplace sexual harassment claims only; this version expands the prohibition to claims of other types of discrimination.

In June, Judge Denise Cote (SDNY) found the prior version of  § 7515 to be preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act and therefore invalid. (Latif v. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC et al. (S.D.N.Y. 2019) (available at http://bit.ly/2y9w6AL)) Her ruling should apply with equal force to the amended version of § 7515, at least with respect to interstate matters.

CPR covered this issue earlier this month on CPRSpeaks:

https://blog.cpradr.org/2019/08/01/update-legislatures-on-invalidating-pre-dispute-arbitration-agreements/

The full text of the newly enacted § 7515 is pasted below (revisions in blue).

Section 7515: Mandatory arbitration clauses; prohibited

(a) Definitions. As used in this section:

1. The term “employer” shall have the same meaning as provided in subdivision five of section two hundred ninety-two of the executive law.

2. The term “prohibited clause” shall mean any clause or provision in any contract which requires as a condition of the enforcement of the contract or obtaining remedies under the contract that the parties submit to mandatory arbitration to resolve any allegation or claim of an unlawful discriminatory practice of sexual harassment. discrimination, in violation of laws prohibiting discrimination, including but not limited to, article fifteen of the executive law.

3. The term “mandatory arbitration clause” shall mean a term or provision contained in a written contract which requires the parties to such contract to submit any matter thereafter arising under such contract to arbitration prior to the commencement of any legal action to enforce the provisions of such contract and which also further provides language to the effect that the facts found or determination made by the arbitrator or panel of arbitrators in its application to a party alleging an unlawful discriminatory practice based on sexual harassment in violation of laws prohibiting discrimination, including but not limited to, article fifteen of the executive law shall be final and not subject to independent court review.

4. The term “arbitration” shall mean the use of a decision making forum conducted by an arbitrator or panel of arbitrators within the meaning and subject to the provisions of article seventy-five of the civil practice law and rules.

(b) (i) Prohibition. Except where inconsistent with federal law, no written contract, entered into on or after the effective date of this section shall contain a prohibited clause as defined in paragraph two of subdivision (a) of this section.

(ii) Exceptions. Nothing contained in this section shall be construed to impair or prohibit an employer from incorporating a non-prohibited clause or other mandatory arbitration provision within such contract, that the parties agree upon.

(iii) Mandatory arbitration clause null and void. Except where inconsistent with federal law, the provisions of such prohibited clause as defined in paragraph two of subdivision (a) of this section shall be null and void. The inclusion of such clause in a written contract shall not serve to impair the enforceability of any other provision of such contract.

(c) Where there is a conflict between any collective bargaining agreement and this section, such agreement shall be controlling.

Anna Hershenberg is CPR’s Vice President of Programs and Public Policy

Workplace Mandatory Arb Ban Reversed by Kentucky Lawmakers

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Vincent Sauvet

Kentucky has re-authorized the use of mandatory arbitration in employment contracts less than five months after the state’s top Court declared the agreements void.

For a short time, Kentucky was the only state prohibiting the mandatory arbitration of employment disputes. Its legislature has now brought the Commonwealth back into the flock with Senate Bill 7.

In a unanimous 2018 decision, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that the state’s Revised Statutes § 336.700(2) prohibited employers from conditioning employment on an existing employee’s or prospective employee’s agreement to “waive, arbitrate, or otherwise diminish any existing or future claim, right, or benefit to which the employee or person seeking employment would otherwise be entitled.” N. Ky. Area Dev. Dist. v. Snyder, No. 2017-SC-000277-DG, 2018 Ky. LEXIS 363 (Sep. 27, 2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2HmZp8B) (quoting the statute, which is available in full in the opinion).

While the Snyder ruling made Kentucky the nation’s first state to prohibit mandatory employee arbitration agreements, it didn’t last long. With Senate Bill 7, sponsored by state Senate President Robert Stivers, Kentucky reinstated the use of mandatory arbitration in employment contracts,  rendering such agreements enforceable. The provisions of Senate Bill 7 are to be applied retroactively and prospectively.

The bill was signed by Kentucky Gov. Matt Belvin on March 25. The bill passed in the Senate the day before following a 25-11 vote, and a 51-45 vote in the House a day earlier. Save for a few Republicans voting against the bill–eight in the House and three in the Senate–both votes showed a partisan split, with majority Republicans voting for the measure and the Democratic minority voting against (one House Democrat joined 50 Republican colleagues in approving the measure). The bill also had strong support from the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the Kentucky League of Cities and numerous other employer and business groups.

This move happens in a context of long-running disagreement over the question of arbitration in nursing home care agreements between the Kentucky Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. In that dispute, the nation’s top Court set down the law, but the Kentucky Court managed to get in the last word and squash an arbitration agreement.

In Kindred, the Kentucky Supreme Court refused to enforce arbitration agreements signed on behalf of two nursing home residents on the ground that since the right to a trial by jury was “constitutionally sacred” and “inviolate,” the holder of a non-specific power of attorney was barred from entering any agreement on behalf of a principal that would forfeit that right to a jury trial, such as an arbitration agreement.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act  “preempts any statute rule discriminating on its face against arbitration” and “displaces any rule that covertly accomplished the same objective by disfavoring contracts that have the defining features of arbitration agreements.” It reversed the Kentucky decision in Kindred Nursing Ctrs. Ltd. P’ship v. Clark, 137 S. Ct. 1421 (2017) (available at http://bit.ly/2JAWZ7Q).

But in the decision, the U.S. Supreme Court remanded one of the Kindred combined cases for further consideration to examine whether a power of attorney contract was broad enough to allow the attorney to enter into an arbitration agreement on behalf of a nursing home resident.

On remand, the Kentucky Supreme Court stuck to its view that the power of attorney didn’t allow the attorney to make the arbitration agreement, and it upheld its original determination striking arbitration. Kindred Nursing Ctrs. Ltd. P’ship v. Wellner, No. 2013-SC-000431-I (Ky. S.Ct. corrected Nov. 22, 2017) (available at http://bit.ly/2Q3k18A)).

In its first week of the current term last October, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the nursing home’s request to review the case, so it won’t be heard in Washington a second time. That leaves a narrow standard related to powers of attorney that could void an arbitration agreement in Kentucky.

But the broader Snyder decision went directly against the Kindred holding, as well as last year’s Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612 (2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2Y66dwK), which permitted mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements as a condition of employment.  Snyder therefore was likely to constitute the start of another counterattack on the Kentucky Supreme Court’s arbitration agreement jurisprudence.

Instead, the Kentucky legislature decided to take the matter into its own hands.  The new law now ensures that Snyder is nothing more than a one-off.

* * *

The author was a CPR Institute Spring 2019 intern. 

 

“Arbitration in America” – A Summary of the Senate Judiciary Committee Meeting

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Echo K.X. Wang 

An April 2 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Arbitration in America,” chaired by North Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, examined the values of the practice, focusing on mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts.

The Senate is closely divided on the subject. Democrats have pushed strongly against mandatory arbitration clauses in reaction to Supreme Court decisions. In the past two months, several bills limiting or eliminating mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts have been introduced.

In February, Rep. Hank Johnson, D., Ga., joined Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D., Conn., to introduce the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act–the FAIR Act–in the House (H.R. 1423), which would “prohibit predispute arbitration agreements that force arbitration of future employment, consumer, antitrust, or civil rights dispute.” (Text and information can be found at https://bit.ly/2UTQoeO.)

More recently, on April 10, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D. Ohio, introduced another bill, Arbitration Fairness for Consumers Act (S. 630), which would restrict mandatory arbitration and class action waivers in contracts that relate to a “consumer financial product or service.” (S.630 can be found at https://bit.ly/2UvCuQs).

The bill would reverse last fall’s vote by the Senate to overturn Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules that barred mandatory pre-dispute arbitration combined with class processes in litigation and arbitration in consumer financial services contracts. The CFPB rule, which had been in the works for more than four years, was rescinded by a 51-50 Senate vote, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote.

For more details on these bills and more, see Vincent Sauvet, New Push Coming for Familiar Arbitration Bills? CPR Speaks blog (April 3) (available at https://bit.ly/2UynZeJ).

While the proposals are facing pushbacks from Republicans and business owners, the committee meeting provided a venue for the two sides to engage in discussions. Most important, the fact that Sen. Graham organized and led this meeting signals that there is a bipartisan opening for negotiation on arbitration reform.

In his initial statement, Graham noted that while arbitration has a place in society, everything good for business is not necessarily best for society. The hearing, he said, therefore sought to address the applicability of arbitration where it conflicts with social issues, in matters including sexual harassment and employment disputes.

Sen. Blumenthal followed, noting that “a right without remedy is [a] dead letter.” Throughout the meeting, Chairman Graham repeatedly stated he wanted to find a “middle-ground” solution to allow businesses to thrive while at the same time provide consumer protection.

But during the two-hour hearing, the divergent views clashed more than they found common ground. The Judiciary Committee listened to testimony from a small business owner, a Navy Reservist, practitioners on both sides, and business owners, all focusing on whether there should be a limit or bar to the use of “forced” arbitration agreements.

The hearing participants discussed the degree to which mandatory arbitration harms consumers, the effects of class-action waivers, and the way that businesses can be affected by mandatory arbitrations.

Sens. Graham and Blumenthal, as well as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D., Calif., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D., R.I., spoke in favor of establishing limits to the arbitration use.

Kevin Ziober, a Newport Beach, Calif., Navy reservist and federal employee, spoke about his experience in which he was forced to arbitrate an employment dispute. Ziober worked as a federal employee for six months when he signed a mandatory arbitration agreement as a condition to keep his job.

When Ziober left his job to join the Navy Reserve, he was fired from his position on the last day of work. As a result, he was forced to arbitrate his rights under the Uniformed Services Employment & Reemployment Rights Act. Ziober argued that “no Americans should be denied the choice to enforce their rights.”

In response to a question from Sen. Joni Ernst, R. Iowa, on the impact of being forced into arbitration, Ziober described the anxiety and hardship he faced after being fired, knowing that he would not have a job after serving in the military. Ziober advocated that “an option to go to court should be something all servicemen be allowed.”

Prof. Myriam Gilles, a professor at New York’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, argued that when the Federal Arbitration Act was enacted in 1925, Congress intended to help ensure businesses so that their “agreements to arbitrate with each other can be enforced.” But, she said, the FAA was never meant to be applied to massive employment arbitrations that strip away individuals’ rights under state and federal law, providing a litigation shield for companies. Nor was it meant to be used in take-it-or-leave-it boilerplate agreements against individuals with no bargaining power, according to Gilles.

In response to a question from Sen. Graham, Gilles clarified that she does not wish to “do away” with arbitration. “We only want to get rid of arbitration clauses that are forced upon consumers and employees who have no choice,” she said.

Prof. Gilles also spoke extensively against class action bans, noting that it is often too expensive and time intensive for each individual to arbitrate their cases alone. As a result, forced arbitration provisions are shielding companies from liability, she said.

Alan Carlson, an owner and chef of Italian Colors Restaurant in Oakland, Calif., described his experiences with arbitration clauses as a small business owner. Carlson said he was forced to arbitrate a claim with the credit card company American Express, which took more than 10 years to conclude, and included a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court that sent him to arbitration. (See American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 559 U.S. 1103 (2010) (available at http://bit.ly/2Zb41FD).)

He said he was “shocked” when he learned that the documents he signed included a mandatory arbitration clause. He noted that small businesses like his have no bargaining power to negotiate contracts with credit card companies, while big companies like Walgreens and Safeway have the power to negotiate and remove mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts with those same companies.

Carlson stated that “small businesses do not get their day in court because they have no power,” and that it is impossible for small businesses to hold large corporations accountable for their actions.

Carlson’s statement evoked strong empathy in Sen. Blumenthal, who echoed the unfairness that the big companies had their day in court, but Carlson was denied his. In response to questions from Blumenthal and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D., Minn., Carlson stated that mandatory arbitration handcuffs and prevents small businesses from “getting a fair shot of leveling the playing field.” In addition, Carlson stated that the companies often don’t give contracting parties enough time to get through all the fine print “unless you have an attorney on hand.”

  1. Paul Bland, Jr., executive director of Washington,, D.C., public interest law firm Public Justice, argued that forced arbitration clauses are “rigged and unfair.” He notes that it is getting harder to challenge arbitration clauses, and the clauses are often written to the disadvantage of consumers.

As examples, Bland cited to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report that suggests even when a person is directed to read an arbitration provision, only 9% of the people knew it means they cannot go to court.

Furthermore, Bland cited an instance where a rape victim was forced to arbitrate, and was given a choice to select from a list of arbitrators. But, explained Bland, all of the arbitrators were defense attorneys that he said presumptively are pro-corporations.

Previous witnesses Kevin Ziober and Alan Carlson affirmed this point, stating that neither of them had a choice in selecting their arbitrators. Chairman Lindsey Graham expressed concern about this practice, and stated that he will look into the issue.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker spoke passionately against arbitration provisions, arguing that it unfairly stacks the deck against consumers and impedes individuals’ ability to seek redress. Citing a study suggesting that big corporations win 98% of arbitrations, Booker exclaimed, “This is not justice. This is not equal justice. This is corporate favoritism.”

Finally, Sen. Dick Durbin, D. Ill., suggested that mandatory arbitration clauses should be barred from student agreements to attend for-profit college, especially those that guarantee job placement. He said that in these situations, the arbitration clauses especially harm middle-income people.

Durbin noted that that if a student starts with a busboy job, goes to a for-profit school paying tens of thousands of dollars yet still comes out a bus boy, the school considers that a “placement” and can’t be sued for misrepresentation.

Arbitration proponents then had a chance to fire back, demanding that consumer arbitrations be allowed to continue.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R., Iowa, advocated to have more transparency in arbitration clauses to help bring accountability. He said that “consumers should know what they are agreeing to.” He raised the concern that banning mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses may impose extraordinary costs to corporations, which may in turn result in the costs being passed down to consumers.

Alan Kaplinsky, a partner at Ballard Spahr in Philadelphia and longtime business arbitration advocate, argued that arbitration under the FAA is important for companies. He said that the arbitration system is dynamic, and most of the times it works for both companies and individual consumers. He also rejected the argument that arbitration provisions offer no choices for consumers.

When questioned by Sen. Grassley about best practices to enforce transparency in arbitration clauses, Kaplinsky noted that it is important to draft arbitration agreements to “create fundamental fairness, give the consumer or employee the right to reject or opt out of the arbitration within some reasonable period of time.” He notes that these are not practices “required” under existing arbitration rules such as those issued by providers like the American Arbitration Association and JAMs.

Kaplinsky agreed with Sen. Grassley’s point that banning arbitration would create billions of dollars in costs for corporations, in addition to costs in defending against potential influxes of class action suits.

Victor E. Schwartz, a co-chair at the Public Policy Practice Group of Shook, Hardy, & Bacon, and a well-known as a Washington tort reform advocate and a supporter of class-action restrictions, also argued for consumer arbitration. He said that arbitration is generally a cheaper and faster alternative to litigation.

Schwartz also argued that consumers have the duty to read contracts and agreements, even if the clause is buried within the agreement. He rejected the view that consumers lack choice, noting that consumers enter binding arbitrations willingly. “You can choose to go to an employment office that does not require you to sign binding arbitration,” he said.

In addressing the argument that mandatory class action waivers harm the ability to address smaller claims, Schwartz countered that most employees are not eligible for class action anyway, given that the cases are usually factually different, and therefore class action is not a viable alternative.

Finally, Schwartz criticized plaintiffs’ attorneys, noting that since they usually are not paid by the hour, they are unlikely to accept litigation cases to represent employees in small claims cases. Thus, he said, in cases involving claims of $20,000-$30,000, arbitration is likely the only way for employees to get their claims addressed.

* * *

To read further about this committee meeting from a different perspective, see Ellis Kim, “Arbitration Gets the Spotlight at Senate Judiciary Hearing,” Law.com (April 2) (available at https://bit.ly/2Ug7KxU).

A video of the hearing, as well as transcripts of the individuals’ remarks, is available from the Senate Judiciary Committee here: http://bit.ly/2KBiB6c.

* * *

The author is a Spring 2019 CPR Institute intern, and a student at Brooklyn Law School.

 

New Push Coming for Familiar Arbitration Bills?

/ CPR Staff / 1 Comment

By Vincent Sauvet

Democrats in Congress late last month announced their intention to focus their efforts on passing new legislation to ban mandatory arbitration in several types of disputes. A package of bills, some still awaiting introduction, would target the arbitration of employment, consumer, antitrust and civil rights disputes.

The bills are mostly updates of long-running efforts, some dating back to the 1990s, that seek to limit processes that interfere with consumers’ and workers’ abilities to file suits against product and service providers, and employers—especially those that targeted class actions.

Now, at least some of the bills appear to be gaining more publicity and increasing support in the wake of controversy over mandatory processes.

This legislative effort will be spearheaded by the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal, which its sponsors are referring to as the FAIR Act of 2019. It was announced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D., Conn., and Rep. Hank Johnson, D., Ga., both longtime opponents of mandatory arbitration, with the bill’s introduction on Feb. 28.

H.R.1423 and S.610 would “amend title 9 of the United States Code with respect to arbitration.” The flagship of the current crop of proposals targeting arbitration, the bill is co-sponsored by 32 Senate Democrats along with independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.  The number of House Democrats co-sponsoring the legislation has risen to 171 in the month since it was introduced, from 147.

The FAIR Act would ban arbitration in employment, consumer and antitrust disputes, as well as in civil rights disputes. The bill is a rebranding of the previous Congress’s Arbitration Fairness Act of 2018, also by Blumenthal and Johnson, covering the same issues.

In conjunction with the broad FAIR Act, several bills tackling more specific issues have also been announced.

The first is the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2019, sponsored by Rep. Cheri Bustos, D., Ill., a reintroduction of her bill from the previous session, which had been co-sponsored by Pramila Jayapal, D., Wash., and, on the Senate side, New York Democrat and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand.  Jayapal is co-sponsoring the new bill, along with—significantly–a New York Republican, Elise Stefanik.

The bill would ban mandatory arbitration of sex discrimination disputes by banning any predispute arbitration agreement between an employer and employee arising out of conduct that would form the basis of a claim based on sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although this would be subject to some limitations, the prohibition would not apply to arbitration provisions contained in a contract between an employer and a labor organization, or between labor organizations.

Another bill, the Restoring Justice for Workers Act, would go even further than ending the arbitration of sexual harassment claims. It would establish an outright ban of mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts.

The bill was introduced in the previous 115th Congress, last October, by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D. N.Y., and Sen. Patty Murray, D., Wash., seeking to make illegal any predispute arbitration agreement when related to an employment dispute, which would include sexual harassment. It also would pose further restrictions on post-dispute arbitration agreements.

The proposal was an immediate Congressional reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612 (May 21, 2018), which it would have overturned. But the bill had trouble getting bipartisan support, and likely will suffer the same issues in the current Congress, where it has not yet been introduced.

A bill announced and introduced with the FAIR Act included the Arbitration Fairness for Consumers Act, S.630, sponsored by Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, which would tackle the specific issue of mandatory arbitration in financial adviser and broker contracts.

While Brown has focused primarily on student loans and credit card agreements, the bill is in fact broader in scope.  It would prohibit any predispute arbitration agreement and joint-action waivers related to any consumer financial product or service dispute.

Another bill introduced with the FAIR Act, the Safety Over Arbitration Act would render void any predispute agreement compelling the arbitration of claims alleging facts relevant to a public health or safety hazard. The bill, S.620, was introduced by Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

As an interesting side note, the bill would also compel the arbitrator of such a claim to provide to the parties a written explanation of the factual and legal basis for his decision. While most arbitrators provide such explanation already, there is no legal requirement to do so.

Under the sponsorship of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D., Vt., the Restoring Statutory Rights and Interests of the State Act, S.635, was also reintroduced. The bill would prohibit any predispute arbitration agreement providing for the arbitration of claims brought by an individual or small business concern and arising from the alleged violation of a state or federal statutory or constitutional provision. The bill is nearly identical to its previous iterations, which were introduced but ultimately died in the 114th and 115th Congresses, and is most likely to suffer the same fate.

The Justice for Servicemembers Act also should be reintroduced soon by Reps. David Cicilline, D., R.I., and Connecticut’s Sen. Blumenthal. Like the versions in the previous three Congressional sessions, the bill aims to end the use of arbitration in cases under the Uniform Services Employment Rights Act.

Finally, the Fairness in Long-Term Care Arbitration Act was also announced by Rep. Linda Sanchez, D., Calif. While there is no text available yet, the bill would end the use of arbitration clauses in nursing home agreements.

These announced attempts at legislative change regarding arbitration use come up at a time when arbitration has suffered from bad press. The #MeToo movement made arbitration, which usually is conducted out of the public’s view, appear as a tool to silence victims. Although the broader controversy over mandatory arbitration in employment and labor disputes traditionally has been the legislative target of Democrats, the specific issue of sexual harassment moved the subject into broader view, drawing attention from a larger section of the political spectrum.

Still, the broader bills, such as the FAIR Act, the Restoring Justice for Workers Act and the Arbitration Fairness for Consumers Act are unlikely to gather enough support in order to pass in the current Congress. They will, for the most part, face the same Republican opposition that have defeated similar proposals.

But new, more-specific bills–those providing small incremental changes that exhibit more potential for bipartisan support–are more likely to succeed. Given the current political climate, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment stands a good chance of advancing. Several businesses such as Google, Microsoft, Uber and Lyft have effectively banned the arbitration of sexual harassment claims and sometimes other employment matters.

Though there are only three co-sponsors, the early appearance of a House Republican could indicate the bill’s broader appeal.

These moves, collectively, provide at least some momentum. “I’m encouraged that some of the leading companies are voluntarily changing their practices… but we can’t rely on everyone to do the right thing voluntarily” Sen. Blumenthal said.

* * *

The author, an international LLM student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, is a 2019 CPR Institute spring intern.

Mandatory Shareholder Arbitration: J&J View Passes SEC’s Test

/ CPR Staff / 1 Comment

By Shannon Collins

A no-action letter last month put the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s stamp of approval on Johnson & Johnson’s move to bar a shareholder vote at its annual meeting on the use of mandatory arbitration for securities disputes between the company and its shareholders.

Last spring, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton discussed the possibility of supporting a mandatory arbitration provision that would bar class actions as part of an initial public offering, according to two Reuters articles. See Alison Frankel, “SEC chair Clayton is in no rush for mandatory shareholder arbitration,” Reuters (April 27, 2018) (available at https://reut.rs/2EJlRX4), and Alison Frankel, “The case against mandatory shareholder arbitration,” Reuters (Aug. 22, 2018) (available at https://reut.rs/2Tmptby).

While arbitration is an invaluable dispute resolution tool, the use of mandatory processes in consumer and employment cases with class-action waivers generated controversy before the Supreme Court signed off on permitting them last year in employment cases, and in 2011 in consumer contracts.

In IPOs, mandatory individual arbitration would eliminate shareholder class actions, which is a mechanism frequently used to prosecute securities fraud suits—often after share price fluctuations following the initial offerings.

The class-action model allows for more shareholders to participate in litigation against fraud and have their voices heard, while individual arbitration may remain confidential and result in varying terms and decisions, according to a coalition of organizations seeking to bar mandatory shareholder arbitration under the securities laws.  See Letter to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, (Jan. 16, 2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2NJdRJs).

Clayton’s comments caused an uproar from several organizations and resulted in the formation of a consumer-group coalition, Secure Our Savings. SOS comprises the Consumer Federation of America and the Consumers Union, along with attorneys from the American Association for Justice, Public Justice, and Public Citizen, among many others.

Johnson & Johnson has been the center of attention of mandatory shareholder arbitration news. Hal Scott, a Harvard Law professor who represents a trust that owns J&J shares, issued an open letter to the health care giant on behalf of the trust encouraging a shareholder proposal for mandatory dispute arbitration, including disputes involving securities fraud.

Micah Hauptman, financial services counsel at Washington, D.C.’s Consumer Federation of America, wrote in response to an email inquiry that he believes such clauses “would violate the federal securities laws and would be inconsistent with longstanding SEC policy on the matter. In addition, such clauses would violate state law because they would exceed the bounds of the internal affairs doctrine.” See also Barbara Roper and Micah Hauptman, “A Settled Matter: Mandatory Shareholder Arbitration Is against the Law and the Public Interest,” Consumer Federation of America (Aug. 15, 2018) (available at http://bit.ly/2UpR1ZR).

In response to Scott’s proposal, New Brunswick, N.J.-based J&J submitted a request to the SEC asking for a no-action letter that would allow the company to exclude the mandatory arbitration proposal from J&J’s annual meeting proxy statement.

The basis of J&J’s exclusion is 1934 Securities Exchange Act Rule 14a-8(i)(2), which allows for companies to exclude shareholder proposals “if the proposal would, if implemented, cause the company to violate any state, federal, or foreign law to which it is subject.” J&J said it believed that the proposal would cause it to violate federal securities law, as well as New Jersey state law.

J&J claimed in its letter to the SEC that the proposal violates Exchange Act Section 29(a), which voids provisions that “bind[] any person to waive compliance with any [part of the act] . . . or of any rule or regulation thereunder.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that Section 29 applies only to waivers of substantive provisions, not procedural provisions. Shearson/American Express v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220 (1987) (available at http://bit.ly/2ECOyVh). Therefore, J&J could not claim that mandatory arbitration violates Exchange Act Section 27 (granting exclusive jurisdiction of claims under the act to U.S. District Courts).  J&J instead argued that mandatory arbitration would violate Exchange Act Rules 10b and 10b-5 prohibiting securities fraud.

Though J&J noted that the Supreme Court has held that arbitration provisions do not cause a waiver of compliance with substantive Exchange Act provisions, the SEC has allowed for exclusion of arbitration proposals based partially on arguments of Section 29(a) violations. J&J relied on those exclusions as precedent.

J&J also raised public policy concerns, arguing that arbitration agreements should be made on an individual basis rather than by corporate organizational documents.

In contrast, Hal Scott assured in his supporting statement that his proposal in no way violates state or federal law. (See the link above to the J&J letter on the SEC’s website; Scott’s proposal and supporting statement are exhibits.)

He wrote that the Supreme Court has held that mandatory individual arbitration provisions aren’t in conflict with the federal securities laws, and that New Jersey law allows for the provision because the state views corporate bylaws as a contract between corporations and stockholders.

Scott supported his proposal by highlighting the billions of dollars companies can spend on shareholder lawsuits. “We believe arbitration is an effective alternative to class actions,” he wrote. These suits also can be frivolous and result in a waste of both time and money for all parties involved, according to Scott.

After evaluating the parties’ arguments on the complex securities laws, Commissioner Clayton released a Feb. 11 statement backing the J&J request. The SEC response assured that, should J&J exclude Scott’s shareholder proposal, the SEC would not seek enforcement action.

Clayton’s statement emphasized that the no-action response is neither an acknowledgment nor a denial that Scott’s proposal violates Rule 14a-8(i)(2), but rather is just a statement that the proposal will not be enforced.

The New Jersey laws carried the no-action determination. Clayton states that no New Jersey precedent applies to the matter perfectly, but he seemed to be more inclined to believe that the proposal could violate state law.

That view was reinforced by a determination by N.J. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who advised the SEC in January that the proposal violates New Jersey law. “We view this submission as a legally authoritative statement that we are not in a position to question,” wrote SEC Corporation Finance Division attorney-adviser Jacqueline Kaufman in the agency’s no action letter.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Clayton indicated that he “wants to avoid a brawl” for now over a topic as divisive as this one, choosing instead to toe the line rather than spark a political fight.

With news of this SEC decision, Hal Scott remains optimistic about the possible future of mandatory shareholder arbitration. He spoke to Reuters about plans to appeal the SEC’s recommendation and discussed his reaction to the filing.

While he is unconvinced the appeal will succeed, he sees opportunity for future proposals like the one he submitted to J&J in the SEC’s deliberate omission of an affirmative statement regarding the legality of mandatory shareholder arbitration in the no-action letter.

This, according to Scott, is the most significant development so far. According to the Reuters article, the move “leaves open the prospect of mandatory shareholder arbitration for corporations based in states whose corporate codes would permit it.”

With the SEC permitting exclusion of shareholder proposals for mandatory arbitration, it raises a question of whether any company undertaking an IPO will be able to implement such a proposal.

The SEC at least appears hesitant to make a ruling on whether it believes mandatory arbitration violates any state or federal laws. If the SEC continues to allow exclusions like J&J’s, however, it may effectively result in the SEC taking the position that these arbitration provisions likely violate state or federal law.

A determination like this may be best left for Congress, rather than the SEC—though Clayton, according to Reuters, has vowed to have the full commission decide the issue of shareholder arbitration and the FAA, rather than piecemeal Corporation Finance Division opinions, when the time is ripe.

Regardless, this is an unsettled area of law that, once resolved, potentially will have immense impact on the landscape of public offerings, corporate governance, litigation and ADR.

* * *

The author, a CPR Institute Spring 2019 intern, is a student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

Amicus Preview: New Prime’s New Look at Mandatory Arbitration

/ CPR Staff / Leave a comment

By Sara Higgins

For the second year in a row, the Supreme Court is kicking off its new term with a focus on arbitration.

This year’s case, New Prime, Inc. v. Oliveira, No. 17-340—which will be argued tomorrow, the Court’s third day of arguments in the new term—focuses on whether the Federal Arbitration Act Sec. 1 exemption language from the act’s application for certain “contracts of employment” encompasses independent contractor agreements.

The case—an appeal from Oliveira v. New Prime Inc., 857 F.3d 7 (1st Cir. 2017)(available at https://bit.ly/2tEzlkr)—is potentially significant for many workers, though it isn’t attracting the attention of the 2017-2018 term’s kickoff argument, Epic Systems v. Lewis.  That case, decided in May, strongly backed the use of mandatory arbitration in conjunction with waivers of class arbitration and litigation processes in workplace disputes. See CPR Speaks blog coverage at https://bit.ly/2xPvFMk; see analysis at Russ Bleemer, “While Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Strategize, the Supreme Court’s Strong Backing Likely Will Grow Mandatory Processes,” 36 Alternatives 97 (July/August 2018)(available at https://bit.ly/2QsxLJ5).

The Court is still one justice short of the longstanding nine-judge bench, as the Senate continues its fight over the nomination of D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to succeed retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.

So a 4-4 outcome looms. The Court could order a rehearing after its decision to include Kavanaugh or another new justice if a party asks for it. See Court Rule 44, available at https://bit.ly/2NE6ouV.

Despite a shift to a “gig” economy for many workers, the number of independent contractors the New Prime case focuses on actually shrunk since about a decade ago, according to a report earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, to 6.9% of total U.S. employment in 2017, from 7.4% in 2005.

But the more than 10 million workers in these arrangements often see mandatory arbitration in their work agreements, as do millions more in so-called contingent employment situations which, depending on their agreements, may be covered by whatever the Court decides in New Prime.

The Court’s FAA backing in general employment cases in Epic Systems points to a similar decision in New Prime. But groups backing individual independent contractors are drawing a contrast, and argue that these workers should be treated different and not compelled to arbitrate against the companies with which they contract.

The case is summarized at Mark Kantor, “U.S. Supreme Court Grants Cert to Decide “Who Decides” “Independent Contractor” Employment Arbitration Case,” CPR Speaks blog (available at https://bit.ly/2RpwP9E), and Ginsey Varghese, “Supreme Court Will Decide Independent Contractor Arbitration Case,” 36 Alternatives 59 (April 2018)(available at https://bit.ly/2xW5MdN).

Below are highlights of amicus views filed in the case that back the petitioner, trucking company New Prime, along with statements about the filing party’s interest in the case.  The petitioners’ amicus supporters were required to file first. In a CPR Speaks post to follow shortly, we will examine the views of the respondent employees’ friend-of-the-Court supporters.

In support of petitioner New Prime seeking reversal:

  1. American Trucking Associations, Inc.
  • American Trucking Associations is an Arlington, Va.-based group that represents the trucking industry with members including companies and state organizations. ATA regularly represents “the common interests of the trucking industry in courts.” Many of its member companies contract with owner-operators who may enter into agreements to arbitrate disputes that arise during the course of their business relationship.
  • The amicus brief says that the First Circuit decision upends the expectation that the FAA will require motor carriers and their independent contractors to arbitrate any disputes that arise between them under their agreements, including in some cases the question whether a given dispute is arbitrable. Even where both sides agreed to arbitrate, “[t]his sweeping, idiosyncratic holding . . . would mean that owner-operators and carriers . . . could never expect those agreements to be enforced under the FAA. . . .” The decision undermines the federal policy favoring arbitration, to the detriment of motor carriers and independent owner-operators.
  1. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Society for Human Resource Management
  • The Chamber regularly files amicus curiae briefs in business cases, and has emphasized an anti-class action stance that incorporates a strong endorsement for individual arbitration in many Supreme Court and federal appellate court cases. The Chamber notes that its members and affiliates regularly rely on arbitration agreements in their contractual relationships. The SHRM, based in Alexandria, Va., represents 300,000 human resources professionals world-wide.
  • The brief says that independent contractors are not covered by the FAA Sec. 1 exemption from arbitration for “contracts of employment.” The brief says that participants on both sides in the “rapidly expanding” independent contractor market “rely upon the enforceability of agreements between businesses and independent contractors.”
  • If the decision below is allowed to stand, the brief says, “untold thousands of arbitration agreements would be called into question.”
  • Before the First Circuit decision, courts uniformly understood that FAA Sec. 1 “’contracts of employment’ means what it says: a contract between an employer and an employee—not an agreement with an independent contractor to perform work.”
  • The panel majority also failed to recognize that its interpretation is inconsistent with the context in which the Sec. 1 exemption was enacted—against the backdrop of other federal laws that recognize the long-established distinction between employees and independent contractors.
  1. Cato Institute
  • The conservative Washington, D.C., think tank focuses on free enterprise and often speaks out on the freedom to contract: “This case is important to Cato because it concerns the freedom of individuals and businesses to structure their economic relations through contractual agreement.”
  • Cato takes an historical approach to criticizing the appellate court decision and urging reversal. At the time of the FAA’s 1925 enactment, Cato wrote, contracts of employment referred to traditional employer–employee relationships, not independent contractor arrangements. Courts embraced the same distinction in applying the common law, as did the legal dictionaries and treatises of the time. The FAA’s text is plain: only certain agreements establishing traditional employer– employee relationships are exempt from the FAA’s scope—that is, transportation workers like the seamen and railway employees the statute names.
  • Statutory history, including contemporaneous state laws, confirms that the FAA’s contracts-of-employment exemption is limited to traditional employer– employee relationships, and doesn’t include independent contractors.
  1. New England Legal Foundation
  • NELF is a conservative free-market advocacy group in Boston.
  • It makes a statutory construction argument to restrict the FAA Sec. 1 exclusion from application for transportation workers to the enumerated seamen and railroad employees, and the phrase “any other class of workers” is narrowed by the “ejusdem generis” rule, meaning “of the same kind.” This means that undefined statutory terms should be construed consistently with their immediate context, not in isolation from that context.
  • This also means that statutory terms should be interpreted consistently with the statute’s overarching purpose—here, the FAA’s purpose to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms. This purpose, coupled with the traditional statutory construction rules, mandates a narrow interpretation of the exemption contained within Section 1 of the FAA.
  • The NELF argues that, based on the immediate context of the phrase “contracts of employment” in 9 U.S.C. Sec. 1, the FAA’s purpose, and a plausible historical explanation for the exemption, “contracts of employment,” must define an employer-employee relationship, not an independent contractor relationship.
  • When interpreted properly, in its immediate context, “contracts of employment” modifies “seamen” and “railway employees,” which are the two prominent classes of transportation employees in the statute, not independent contractors.
  • The FAA’s overarching purpose counsels in favor of enforcing, not exempting, arbitration agreements under the FAA.
  • The FAA’s exemption for seamen and railroad workers allowed those employees to sue employers for work-related injuries under two contemporaneous statutes—“a liberalized tort remedy.” Notes the NELF, “Since independent contractors are not covered by the [those acts], Congress would have no reason to exempt them from the FAA’s scope.”

 Customized Logistics and Delivery Association

  • CLDA is a nonprofit Washington trade association that advocates for the interests of delivery companies. New Prime is of significant interest to CLDA because of the common industry practice of using independent owner-operators to transport cargo. These independent owner-operators are crucial to the structure of many of the carriers’ businesses, as they often provide the equipment and services carriers need to meet the changing demands of their businesses. Carriers frequently rely on arbitration provisions in their contracts with owner-operators to ensure that both parties have an efficient and cost-effective means through which they can resolve their disputes.
  • The CLDA relies on a general argument about arbitration’s effectiveness in urging the nation’s top Court to reverse.
  • The First Circuit decision, which applied an overly expansive interpretation of the FAA exception, would render unenforceable the arbitration agreements used by the largest segment of the CLDA membership—small operators with one to 50 operators and annual revenue below $1 million. That would leave both the carriers and owner-operators subject to the threat of lengthy and costly litigation.
  • The First Circuit decision “not only conflicts with the holdings of other federal courts, it directly conflicts” with the FAA’s central goal, “to ensure that arbitration agreements between contracting parties are enforceable by the parties, thereby safeguarding each party’s access to an efficient and cost-effective alternative to litigation.”
  • “In order to achieve these goals, the determination of ‘whether a contract qualifies as a ‘contract of employment’’ within the meaning of Section 1 of the FAA “requires a categorical approach that focuses solely on the words of the contract.” In re Swift Transportation Co. Inc., 830 F.3d 913, 920 (9th Cir. 2016)(Ikuta, J., dissenting).
  • The CLDA states that “[c]ourts should not be allowed to make factual determinations regarding the employment relationship of the contracting parties for two reasons. First, to do so deprives the parties of the benefits of arbitration by forcing the parties to expend valuable resources in a preliminary court battle. Second, a threshold factual determination means that the parties must essentially litigate the merits of the case. This in turn creates uncertainty as to the enforceability of the contract at execution.”

 

The author was a 2018 CPR Institute summer intern and is a student at Northeastern University School of Law. Alternatives editor Russ Bleemer assisted with research.