Seyfarth Synopsis: On March 17, the House of Representatives passed the “Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act of 2022” or the “FAIR Act,” which would ban the use of mandatory arbitration agreements and class and collective action waivers in the employment context (as well as for consumer, antitrust, and civil rights disputes). If the Act were to pass the Senate and be signed into law, it would represent a sea change for employers, overturn decades of Supreme Court case law, and require employers to completely rethink their arbitration programs. Although the Act’s prospects for passing the Senate are very uncertain, employers should pay close attention to developments in Washington, D.C., because, if passed, the Act would upend employers’ settled expectations with regard to their arbitration programs—not to mention impact businesses with regard to consumer and antitrust claims.
As we reported previously (here, here, and here), there has been a push in Congress and several states to ban enforcement of mandatory arbitration agreements for employment claims. State efforts have largely—although not in every instance—been stymied by the Federal Arbitration Act, which provides that most arbitration agreements are enforceable according to their terms and which preempts states’ efforts to limit the enforceability of arbitration agreements. And at the federal level, at least until recently, there was not a bipartisan majority in Congress sufficient to pass bills limiting the...
In January of 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice reported a record-breaking year for False Claims Act recoveries, with the vast majority related to healthcare. What the DOJ report does not captu...