CalMatters
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 agreements through a private third party rather than going to court are known as arbitration agreements. More than two thirds of private, non-union workers in California are already required to use arbitration instead of going to court, according to a study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Employers tend to favor arbitration because it’s faster and...
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