The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, which seeks to determine the implications of its 2018 case involving electronic health record system Epic.
In that case, Epic Systems v. Lewis, the U.S. Supreme Court found that employers can implement arbitration agreements with class-action waivers.
But the new case will determine whether that decision extends to waivers of claims brought under the California Private Attorneys General Act.
WHY IT MATTERS
As employer lawyers from Epstein Becker & Green noted in a blog post, the decision in Viking River may extend beyond California, just as the one in Epic Systems did.
But given the tech giants with operations in California – including Google and Apple – even a decision that only impacted the state would have repercussions for workers in the health IT industry. Indeed, a group of Google employees brought suit against the company under PAGA in 2016.
At issue in the case is California's law allowing a single employee to file suit on behalf of all aggrieved workers for violations of the state's Labor Code. The law allows them to do so, the attorneys said, without having to undergo the procedural requirements for a class action.
The Court's decision in Epic Systems upheld the use of class action waivers in arbitration agreements, which essentially required labor and wage disputes to be fought out individually rather than as part of class-action battles.
According to Epstein Becker...
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