Workforce Bulletin

Here’s a question you likely have never considered: Are hackers overseas infiltrating employers’ computer systems just to sign arbitration agreements with class action waivers for random employees?

While there is no evidence that this has ever happened anywhere, and no logical reason why it would, plaintiffs’ lawyers and even some courts seem to believe this could happen. And that is at the heart of the latest battleground over arbitration agreements with class actions waivers.

Since the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Epic Systems v. Lewis, more and more ...

For more than a few years -- at least since the United States Supreme Court’s seminal 2017 decision in Epic Systems v. Lewis -- employers across the country have weighed whether to have their employees sign arbitration agreements with class and collective action waivers. 

While many employers have chosen to do so, many have elected not to. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 15, 2022 decision in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana could have a tremendous impact upon pending and future litigation, as well as employment practices in the state.

For some California employers, it will impact pending Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) litigation where the named plaintiff has an arbitration agreement with a class and representative action waiver.

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis that employers may lawfully require employees to sign arbitration agreements that include a waiver of the right to participate in an employee class action lawsuit or arbitration. Below, we discuss the significance of this decision and highlight issues that employers may wish to consider in the wake of it.

Epic Systems—a Pivotal Win for Employers

The NLRB planted the seed for Epic Systems in 2012, when it first took the position that Section 7 of the National Labor relations Act (“NLRA”)—which affords employees ...

Following on the heels first of the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 13, 2017 announcement that it granted certiorari in NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, along with Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (7th Circuit) and Ernst & Young, et al. v. Morris (9th Cir.), and then of President Trump’s January 26, 2017 appointment of Philip A. Miscimarra as Acting Chair of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”), there is yet another new development in the ongoing fight over the NLRB’s challenge of class action waivers in arbitration agreements.

Acting swiftly, on January 26, 2017, the ...

On January 13, 2017, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear three cases involving the enforceability of arbitration agreements that contain class action waivers.

Whether such agreements are enforceable has been a hotly contested issue for several years now, particularly in cases involving wage-hour disputes.

The Fifth Circuit has held that such waivers can be enforceable (NLRB v. Murphy Oil, Inc.), joining the Second and Eighth Circuits in that conclusion. The Seventh (Epic Systems, Inc. v. Lewis) and Ninth Circuits (Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris) have held that ...

One of the most controversial issues in employment law these days involves the position of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) that an employer violates the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) when it requires employees to pursue any dispute they have with their employer on an individual, rather than on a class or collective action, basis with other employees. It is a position that has been adopted by two circuit courts and rejected by three—a conflict that suggests that the issue is ripe for U.S. Supreme Court review.

The NLRB has contended that ...

Even further expanding the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) holdings in D.R. Horton and Murphy Oil limiting employer requirements concerning class action waivers, on June 26, 2015, an NLRB administrative law judge (“ALJ”) ruled that even a non-mandatory arbitration agreement that is voluntarily entered into by employees is unlawful if it requires employees to waive joint, class or collective actions in all forums, judicial and arbitral.

In November 2011, AT&T Mobility Services (“AT&T”) sent via email a Management Arbitration Agreement ...

By Jill Barbarino

On October 28 a three-member majority of the National Labor Relations Board in Murphy Oil U.S.A., Inc.  revisited and reaffirmed its position that employers violate the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”) by requiring employees covered by the Act (virtually all nonsupervisory and non-managerial employees of most private sector employees, whether unionized or not) to waive, as a condition of their employment, participation in class or collective actions.

As previously reported in an Act Now Advisory, in 2012 the NLRB held in D.R. Horton that the home ...

By:  John F. Fullerton III

The Second Circuit has given class action waivers another shot in the arm.  In Parisi v. Goldman, Sachs & Co. (pdf), plaintiff argued that because she had agreed to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims against her employer, but could not proceed in a class-wide arbitration, she must be permitted to pursue her Title VII pattern-or-practice sex discrimination claim as a class action plaintiff in court; otherwise, her arbitration agreement would constitute an impermissible waiver of a substantive statutory right.   The Court firmly ...