The US Supreme Court sided with a Southwest Airlines Co. baggage-handling supervisor seeking to avoid having to go to arbitration with her bid for overtime pay, ruling in a case with possible implications for Uber drivers and Amazon warehouse workers.

The justices unanimously said Monday the supervisor isn’t covered by a federal law that requires enforcement of agreements to take claims to arbitration rather than to court. The majority said the employee qualified for an exception in that law for workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.

The case was being closely watched because of the potential impact on other jobs in the transportation and shipping industries. Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. all filed briefs backing Southwest, urging the court not to interpret the law’s exception as covering their workers.

The ruling didn’t explicitly say how workers in those industries will be affected. Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected calls to exempt virtually all employees of major transportation providers. But he also said some workers are exempted from the arbitration law even if they don’t physically cross a border.

“Airplane cargo loaders plainly do perform activities within the flow of interstate commerce when they handle goods traveling in interstate and foreign commerce, either to load them for air travel or to unload them when they arrive,” Thomas wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn’t take part. Although Barrett didn’t...

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