A federal district court recently entered a permanent injunction barring California from enforcing Assembly Bill 51, the law that purports to preclude employers from requiring arbitration agreements as a condition of employment. The court said the state law is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).
As a result, Assembly Bill 51 no longer stands as an obstacle to employers that wish to require arbitration agreements as a condition of employment in California, so long as the FAA applies and governs the agreement. No appeals or further legal challenges to the law are anticipated, and the court’s permanent injunction is expected to be the final chapter in the four-year legal challenge to Assembly Bill 51.
Assembly Bill 51 was intended to prohibit employers from requiring individuals to sign, as a condition of employment or employment-related benefits, arbitration agreements concerning disputes arising under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act or Labor Code. The law purports to apply to any arbitration agreement entered into, modified, or extended on or after Jan. 1, 2020.
As the law took effect in 2020, a California federal district court granted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s request for a preliminary injunction and enjoined enforcement of the law with respect to arbitration agreements governed by the FAA.
California appealed the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2021, a divided Ninth Circuit panel...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...