A travel-nursing firm's arbitration agreements were thrown out after split rulings – until an appeals court stepped in
A federal appeals court handed employers a big arbitration win, blocking a tactic that threatened to wipe out hundreds of agreements at once.
On April 1, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision in a wage-and-hour case involving Aya Healthcare Services, a large travel-nursing agency. The ruling matters for any HR leader whose company relies on standard arbitration agreements for employees, especially across large workforces.
Aya hires traveling nurses and other clinicians and pairs them with hospitals. As a condition of employment, workers sign agreements saying that any employment-related disputes will be resolved in arbitration rather than in court. Those agreements also include what is known as a delegation clause, which sends questions about the validity of the arbitration agreement itself to an arbitrator instead of a judge.
Four former employees sued Aya, alleging that the company cut their pay in the middle of their assignments and asserting claims for breach of contract, fraudulent inducement, state wage-and-hour violations and violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The district court originally sent each of their cases to separate arbitration proceedings, following the terms of the agreements.
The four arbitrations produced a split result. Two arbitrators decided that the arbitration agreements...
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