Supreme Court majority bars workers from day in court
Above all the Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts is strongly pro-business. The court recently demonstrated that again when it closed the courthouse doors to the ability of many workers to sue for wage theft, harassment, and discrimination.
In Epic Systems v. Lewis, the court in a 5-4 decision ruled that an employer may lawfully require its employees to agree, as a condition of employment, to take all employment-related disputes to arbitration on an individual basis and to waive their right to participate in a class action suit or class arbitration.
The case involved an effort by workers to file a class action suit against an employer for violating the federal minimum wage law. The employer sought to dismiss the case because it had insisted as a condition of employment that the employees waive their ability to go to court or be part of a class action; any dispute had to be resolved out of court in an arbitration.
This should be an easy case. The National Labor Relations Act, a federal law adopted in 1938, protects a right for employees to engage in “concerted activities for the purpose of … mutual aid or protection.” As Justice Ruth Ginsburg explained in her dissent: “By joining hands in litigation, workers can spread the costs of litigation and reduce the risk of employer retaliation.”
But Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by the conservative justices — John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito — rejected this and said that the arbitration clause in the employment contract that was insisted upon by employers had to be enforced and the workers could not go to court. The Supreme Court invoked the Federal Arbitration Act, which provides that arbitration clauses in contracts shall be enforced.
There are many serious flaws with the majority’s reasoning, and this is just the latest in a series of rulings in which the court, all in 5-4 decisions, has held that arbitration clauses in contracts should be enforced even though they are dictated by merchants and employers and doctors often in the small print of form contracts. The effect is to keep people from ever having their day in court.