In summary
A pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling could hollow out a California law that lets employees collectively sue their employers over workplace law violations. Thousands of workers have used the law to address workplace issues, sometimes winning large settlements and changing company policies. But critics say the law mostly benefits the private attorneys doing the suing.
In the early 2000s, California lawmakers identified a problem: There weren’t nearly enough state investigators and lawyers to pursue all the potential violations of workplace laws, such as minimum wage, overtime pay, and more.
So they passed a law letting workers sue their employers in the name of the state, seeking penalties that up until then had been the exclusive domain of a state labor agency. Essentially, it deputized workers to help enforce labor laws via private lawsuits.
That law, called the Private Attorneys General Act, was challenged by a Southern California cruise line in a case recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The specific question the court is expected to decide by June: whether workers who have signed job contracts that bar them from suing their employer can still bring a case to court under the law.
It’s nerdy legal stuff — can you bring a certain kind of lawsuit if you’ve signed a work contract with a certain clause about how disputes get settled?
But it has practical ramifications for a large share of Californian workers.
Contracts requiring workers and employers to settle...
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