California state courts have handed down worker-friendly rulings far more frequently than federal trial courts on employer bids to arbitrate lawsuits brought under a state law that deputizes workers to sue over employment law violations as a proxy for the state.
The divide is a product of the different ways judges are applying the US Supreme Court’s June decision in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, which said employers can force arbitration of workers’ individual claims under California’s Private Attorneys General Act. The ruling left open whether class-like claims brought on behalf of other aggrieved workers can stay in court.
The justices dismissed Angie Moriana’s representative claims, saying PAGA doesn’t have a mechanism for litigating such claims when the individual who sued must arbitrate their own claim. Yet California courts will have the final say on what happens to representative claims in that situation, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her concurring opinion.
Many courts in the state have refused to follow the Supreme Court majority’s view that they should be dismissed.
“State courts haven’t been subtle about it,” said Karina Sterman, a management-side lawyer at Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP. “They’re thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court quite openly.”
PAGA allows individual workers to sue on...
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