The Circuits Disagree About Class Action Waivers In Arbitration, The NLRA, And Prohibition Of “Concerted Activities” In Pursuit Of Employees’ “Mutual Aid Or Protection”.
On October 11, 2016, I blogged that on September 8, a petition for a writ of certiorari had been filed by the accounting firm in Morris v. Ernst & Young, presenting the issue: ““Whether the collective-bargaining provisions of the National Labor Relations Act prohibit the enforcement under the Federal Arbitration Act of an agreement requiring an employee to arbitrate claims against an employer on an individual, rather than collective basis.”
The same source for my earlier post, Kate Howard’s Petition of the Day in SCOTUSBlog, reported on November 2 that on September 9, a petition for a writ of certiorari was filed in National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc.,16-307, presenting the issue: ”Whether arbitration agreements with individual employees that bar them from pursuing work-related claims on a collective or class basis in any forum are prohibited as an unfair labor practice under 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1), because they limit the employees’ right under the National Labor Relations Act to engage in “concerted activities” in pursuit of their “mutual aid or protection,” 29 U.S.C. § 157, and are therefore unenforceable under the savings clause of the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 2.
So now we have a collision between the Ninth Circuit in Morris v. Ernst & Young and the Fifth Circuit in NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA. And the arbitration class action waiver/”concerted activities” issue has been squarely presented to the Supreme Court in dueling petitions for writ of certiorari.
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