(Reuters) - It may be time for lawyers who represent employees in Private Attorney General Act cases in California to start worrying about the U.S. Supreme Court.
In PAGA cases, employees stand in the shoes of the state in representative actions to police employment law violations, with 75% of any recovery going to California and 25% to workers. Plaintiffs file thousands of PAGA suits annually.
In recent months, PAGA defendants have filed a flurry of petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rein in the suits, arguing that employers are entitled to require individual arbitration of PAGA claims. PAGA defendants contend that the U.S. justices must reverse the California Supreme Court, which held in 2014’s Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles LLC that the Federal Arbitration Act does not permit employers to require employees to waive the right to litigate PAGA claims as representative actions in court.
Those petitions are nothing new, in and of themselves. In the first few years after the California high court’s Iskanian decision, PAGA defendants sought U.S. Supreme Court review in at least nine cases. The U.S. justices were distinctly uninterested and denied all of the petitions.
Now, however, there are signs that the Supreme Court’s interest in PAGA has been piqued. The justices have called for plaintiffs to file response briefs in six cases in which PAGA defendants have petitioned for review. Most of those briefs are due in December.
And in another hint that the...
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