Divided Supreme Court sides with businesses over workers
The outcome does not affect WASHINGTON — A divided people represented by Supreme Court ruled labor unions, but an estimated Monday that businesses 25 million employees can prohibit their workers work under contracts that from banding together in prohibit collective action disputes over pay and conditions by employees who want to in the workplace, a raise claims about some aspect decision that affects an estimated of their employment. 25 million non-unionized The ruling reflected a employees. years-long pattern at the
With the court’s five conservative Supreme Court of limiting members in the class actions and favoring majority, the justices held employer-favored arbitration that individual employees over lawsuits in the can be forced to use arbitration,
courts, generally preferred not the courts, to
by workers. air complaints about wages and overtime. Four dissenting The Trump administration liberal justices said the backed the businesses, decision will hit low-wage, reversing the position the vulnerable workers especially Obama administration took hard. in favor of employees.
While the complaints in The court’s task was to Monday’s decision involved reconcile federal laws that pay issues, the outcome seemed to point in different also might extend to workplace directions. On the one discrimination and hand, New Deal labor laws other disputes if employee explicitly give workers the contracts specify that they right to band together. On must be dealt with in oneon-one the other, the older Federal arbitration. Arbitration Act encourages
Workers who want to the use of arbitration, instead take action against sexual of the courts. harassment, pay discrimination, Justice Neil Gorsuch, pregnancy discrimination writing for the majority, and racial discrimination said the contracts are valid “may now be forced under the arbitration law. behind closed doors into “As a matter of policy these an individual, costly — and questions are surely debatable. often secret — arbitration But as a matter of law process,” said Fatima Goss the answer is clear,” Gorsuch Graves, president and CEO wrote. of the National Women’s Monday’s ruling is in line Law Center. with earlier decisions, he
Lawyers representing said. “In many cases over management said the decision many years, this court has protects businesses heard and rejected efforts from endless, costly litigation. to conjure conflicts between the Arbitration Act and other federal statutes. In fact, this court has rejected every such effort to date (save one temporary exception since overruled),” Gorsuch wrote.
In dissent for the court’s liberals, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision “egregiously wrong” and likely to lead to “huge underenforcement of federal and state stautes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers.” Ginsburg said that the individual complaints can be very small in dollar terms, “scarcely of a size warranting the expense of seeking redress alone.”
Ginsburg, who read a summary of her dissent aloud to stress her disagreement, said employees do not really have a choice about whether to sign such agree- ments, labeling them “armtwisted, take-it-or-leave-it contracts.”
She said “congressional action is urgently in order,” echoing her call in 2007 for Congress to address pay discrimination following a high court ruling from which she dissented.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said she fears the decision will have far-reaching effects. “Today’s decision will make it easier for employers to escape liability for widespread discrimination and harassment. No American should be forced to sign away their right to invoke the meaningful protections afforded by our nation’s critical civil rights laws,” Clarke said.
The National Labor Relations Board, breaking with the administration, argued that contracts requiring employees to waive their right to collective action violate the labor laws.
Business interests were united in favor of the contracts. Gregory Jacob, a former high-ranking Labor Department official in the Bush administration, said the court got it right Monday. “This decision thus will not see a huge increase in the use of such provisions, but it does protect employers’ settled expectations and avoids placing our nation’s job providers under the threat of additional burdensome litigation drain,” Jacob said.
Lower courts had split over the issue. The high court considered three cases — two in which appeals courts ruled that such agreements can’t be enforced and a third in which an appeals court said they are valid.