Last year, I talked a lot about a U.S. Supreme Court case that seemed to open the door for employers to use mandatory arbitration agreements that precluded employees from using class actions to sue their employers.
But I noted at the time that this was a quickly shifting landscape.
A few days ago, the NLRB
In this week’s Connecticut Law Tribune Labor & Employment Law Supplement, I penned a piece about the impact of the new U.S. Supreme Court cases from this past term.
My conclusions?
It is premature to announce the death of wage and hour class actions. But the cases suggest a different future for those types of
Earlier this month, the Second Circuit (Jock v. Sterling Jewelers, Inc.) affirmed an arbitrator’s decision, concluding that the arbitrator’s analysis should be upheld even if the District Court disagreed with the legal analysis. Such a decision is entitled to “substantial deference”.
The case rests on the principle that arbitrations are not going to
Over the last 24 hours, there’s been a lot written about the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes. Frankly, all of them are starting to say the same thing: The decision is going to hamper all class-action discrimination cases going forward.
But that statement tends to simplify the decision a bit too much. In my view, what the decision stands for is that it will be increasingly unlikely that the mega-class action (the one that covers an entire company) will be able to proceed without a very specific and tangible practice or policy that the plaintiffs can point too.
What types of things are we talking about? Well, it would be unlikely, but suppose a company had a mandatory retirement age of 60 but without a legitimate basis for doing so. In essence, it was a company-wide practice of discriminating against older workers. That type of class action will probably survive.
Continue Reading Wal-Mart v. Dukes: What The Class-Action Decision Really Means for Employers
Back in March, I reported on the likelihood of a victory for Wal-Mart in an important class action case up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
This morning, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the class action against the nation’s largest employer, saying, in essence, that the
Now that the dust has settled a bit, it’s time to look at the long-term impact of last month’s Supreme Court decision in AT&T v. Concepcion for employment matters. (For a great analysis of the decision itself, see this SCOTUSblog post.)
All the analysis that has been coming out seems to suggest that there are
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, yesterday held that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts state laws that discuss or limit arbitration agreements on the availability of class action arbitration procedures. 
The case, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (download here) isn’t an employment law case (it concerns whether AT&T should have charged consumers sales tax
Nearly everyone has chimed in over the oral argument in Wal-mart v. Dukes over the last 36 hours up at the Supreme Court. And nearly everyone seems to be predicting an outright victory to Wal-mart.
Because we don’t even have a decision yet, I’ll leave it to others to prognosticate (read: guess) what
With all the snow piling up, there’s been a lot I’ve been meaning to get to but haven’t. So, it’s time to bring back the "Quick Hits" feature where I recap some of the employment law tidbits you might have missed recently.
The U.S. Supreme Court this morning agreed to hear Wal-Mart’s appeal of a decision that granted certification to what would be the largest employment discrimination class action case ever heard in the United States. The SCOTUSBlog has the definitive wrapup here.
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