The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday heard oral arguments in a case involving a Southwest Airlines employee who claims she was stiffed by the Dallas-based company on wages and unpaid overtime.
The case, Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, was the second matter on Monday from which Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself for having taken part in lower court proceedings.
The case is the latest in a string of forced arbitration disputes to reach the nation’s highest court under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The justices were asked to consider whether an airport cargo-loading supervisor is considered an “interstate commerce” worker and therefore entitled to a carve-out from the clause in her contract.
Latrice Saxon works at Chicago Midway Airport as a supervisor for ramp agents who load and unload planes with luggage and cargo. She previously filed a federal wage-and-hour claim for unpaid overtime, and Southwest moved to dismiss on the grounds that Saxon’s contract says she must submit to private arbitration instead of using civil litigation to resolve the wage claim.
The FAA generally upholds arbitration agreements like the one at issue. Saxon, however, argues that she is a “worker…engaged in commerce” and subject to an exemption carved out by the FAA for contracts with “seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit previously sided with Saxon.
Southwest...
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