Last Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court waded into the complicated and controversial waters of California’s Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”). At issue was whether pre-dispute arbitration agreements between employers and employees could be enforced to compel PAGA claims into arbitration – California courts had said no. At stake is a huge loophole which allows plaintiffs to ignore arbitration agreements and class action waivers in such agreements to bring cases on behalf of huge groups of past and current employees. Since the plaintiff and their counsel are considered to be standing in for the State of California, PAGA claims also allow plaintiffs to bypass traditional class certification proceedings.
In Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, the employer argued that California’s rule exempting PAGA claims from employee arbitration agreements violated the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). The Supreme Court agreed, but only in part. Its nuanced opinion ultimately held that a California rule precluding dividing PAGA actions into two components – individual and non-individual claims – is preempted by the FAA. The Court went on to rule that employers could compel arbitration of an individual claim even though it could not compel arbitration of non-individual claims. Finally, the Court concluded that the California court must dismiss the non-individual claims because there was “no mechanism” in PAGA that gave an arbitration-bound plaintiff standing to pursue...
A court has ruled that Seo Mi-hwa, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker, and media outlets that reported her interview claiming former National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Standing Commissioner...