CA's Prohibition on Workplace Arbitration Agreements Overturned by 9th Circuit

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/californias-workplace-arbitration-law-nixed-by-appeals-court

by gnicholas • 3 years ago

75 68 3 years ago

news.bloomberglaw.com

yieldcrv2• 3 years ago

Appalling, lets get the full ninth circuit to review

This relies on that federal court to uphold, which the same one did in 2021, otherwise I don't see a way around it and I’m often pretty good at finding that

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

I don’t see the point. The SC is so stacked that the outcome is pretty much a given.

chadash• 3 years ago

Parent isn’t saying SC. A decision at the federal appeals level can sometimes be reviewed “en bank” by a larger group of judges in that same circuit. It’s not common as far as I know but it happens occasionally. But it’s different than the Supreme Court taking the case.

olliej• 3 years ago

Basically: according to the court your employer can require you to agree to forced arbitration as you have the freedom to be homeless and starve instead, so it's a free and fair agreement and not remotely coercive.

baggy_trough• 3 years ago

Yes, because you can get a different job.

Reptur• 3 years ago

You can until they've all been bought up by a couple of billionaire owned conglomerates. An example being 6 corporations controlling 90% of all mainstream media. As things progress, we'll see further concentration because the name of the game is grow or fail. This is just further backslide of worker's rights in a long history of backslide.

mint2• 3 years ago

No, because every job has that contract clause. That argument doesn’t work when talking about universal standards.

test65542• 3 years ago

Congress set out to incentivize arbitration in America over long and expensive court cases. This is the system working as intended. It would be interesting to hear the non-cynical reason why they made this change. I already am aware of the cynical reason.

gsk22• 3 years ago

As someone who is very much not a lawyer -- isn't one of the major gripes about arbitration that it precludes class action suits?

Certifying a class is a lot easier than thousands of individuals going through repetitive arbitrations. And of course, there is the benefit (for the corporation) that a large percentage of people will find arbitration too burdensome.

wahern2• 3 years ago

Congress set out to incentivize arbitration in America over long and expensive court cases.

That couldn't possibly be the case as when the FAA was originally passed Congress' Commerce Clause powers were relatively narrow and it would have been inconceivable that the FAA could apply as broadly as SCOTUS now applies it.

In order to get to where the FAA is now, SCOTUS had to jump through multiple dubious interpretive hoops, including some dubious textual hoops as the FAA on its face clearly speaks to the types of commerce (e.g. railroads, shipping, etc) that were within its regulatory ambit at the time of passage. By any reasonable interpretation the more general terms SCOTUS leverages would only apply to those areas traditionally understood as interstate commerce, but SCOTUS wasn't trying to be reasonable--they had a goal to minimize Federal case load, particularly related to class actions (which the conservatives detested for other reasons, as well), and set out to achieve it by hook or crook.

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

Of course, they could have aimed for fast and cheap court cases instead, but that would prevent people with money from hammering down the working class.

onphonenow2• 3 years ago

Actually voters elected congress which passed a law to encourage arbitration. So this is congress and will of voters. Don’t like it? Elect different folks is best approach - this would be an easy law to change.

absrd• 3 years ago

As we know everything congress does is good and in accordance with the will of the voters

Manuel_D2• 3 years ago

This is not far off from people saying capitalism is slavery because in order to avoid starvation you have to work. Your employer can require you to do work otherwise you'll be homeless and starve, therefore it's forced labor. Some people may not want to perform the work that an employer demands, and that's not unusual. No one, besides extremists, would call this coercive. I don't see anything different with arbitration.

epicureanideal• 3 years ago

We’re just slowly reverting to serfdom, just this time with a supposedly voluntary 40 page legalese contract.

actually_a_dog• 3 years ago

You're so close to actual understanding here it's painful.

mLuby• 3 years ago

The core argument is that the state law is nullified because it goes against the spirit (though not the letter) of the federal law.

Feels like that introduces more unintended consequences than if they'd just left it up to Congress to patch the loophole the state found.

  ¿Usable  Sing on, you
  against  youngins, o'
  owners?  O.G. yunions

It's fractal in a way: federal law enjoys unequal power over state law, so why would they see an issue with that same imbalance at smaller scales?

wahern2• 3 years ago

Because the real reason for the Supreme Court's jurisprudence regarding the Federal Arbitration Act over the past 30 years is the reduction of Federal case load (via diversity jurisdiction). To overturn long-settled precedent they had to apply a series of novel rationales that continue to metastasize. Not that the conservatives on the court are complaining as it (probably not coincidentally) has coincided with a conservative political shift that, like their liberal counterparts from earlier eras, see Federal courts generally and SCOTUS in particular as a vehicle for imposing conservative policies on liberal states.

biggc• 3 years ago

California’s law sought to evade that policy and, in doing so, would have denied employers and employees alike of the benefits of arbitration

If arbitration is so great for everyone we shouldn’t need provisions in employment contracts!

johngladtj• 3 years ago

???

Beldin• 3 years ago

I understood parent as: "in case X is truly better than alternatives, people will choose X without being forced to" applied for X=arbitration.

raldi• 3 years ago

The tenth amendment reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

What part of the constitution grants Congress the power to impose its will on California in this case?

fwlr• 3 years ago

Wikipedia claims Congress has passed over 30,000 statues in its time. That is however many millions of words worth of edifice and cruft surrounding the Constitution and subtly altering its meaning and influence over time. (That’s the mechanism by which Federal law has granted itself this power. Whether it should have is another question, of course.)

mpweiher• 3 years ago

Usually: the commerce clause.

metiscus• 3 years ago

Wickard v. Filburn[1] effectively took nearly all of the constitutional scope limits off of the federal government. All the government needs to justify interference in the most mundane of human interactions is to find a broader economic nexus in the activity.

Summarized "The Court reasoned that Congress could regulate activity within a single state under the Commerce Clause, even if each individual activity had a trivial effect on interstate commerce, as long as the intrastate activity viewed in the aggregate would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To this extent, the opinion went against prior decisions that had analyzed whether an activity was local, or whether its effects were direct or indirect."[2]

[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/317/111/

[2] https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/317us111

notch898a• 3 years ago

Probably the same part that says it is interstate commerce to grow a pot plant and then smoke all of it 5 feet away from where it is planted.

NewJazz• 3 years ago

The day SCOTUS defined subsistence agriculture as interstate commerce was the day "states' rights" became a complete joke.

The Court decided that Filburn's wheat-growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

Oh you grow your own food so you don't contribute to the profits of huge conglomerates? Not without the Feds' permission!

encryptluks2• 3 years ago

Federal Laws can in fact preempt state laws but in this case I believe they got it completely wrong and intentionally wrong at that. Business owners love arbitration and for good cause. It is much easier to manipulate the arbitration system than courts.

mrguyorama• 3 years ago

It's contracting! You don't even have to manipulate it because every arbitration company will compete to be more favorable to the people paying them!

yieldcrv2• 3 years ago

The Federal Government merely tolerates the states, as it derives its power from them and their delegates. But it has functionally subjugated them all and can sanction them all, almost the same way as it does to any foreign country.

The Supremacy clause is a power delegated to the Unites States by the Constitution

The Interstate commerce clause is a power delegated to the United States by the Constitution

The framers in 1790 did not predict that all commerce would be interstate commerce. Anything that the Federal Government allows to be the sole domain of the States is pure generosity, for quite some time.

The United States is a collection of states, and simultaneously a Federal Government of the same geographical shape overlaid. There is very little "federalism" or collaboration, it is Federal in name alone. Just a separate entity thats more well funded and resourceful than any individual state, or the collection of all the states.

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

If it’s only the employers pushing for arbitration it can’t possibly be because it’s better for the employee.

SamReidHughes6• 3 years ago

It is better because arbitration agreements in a competitive employment market makes wages to be pushed higher or consumer prices to be pushed lower. The possibility of a jury trial adds costs because, the trials are more expensive, for starters, but also juries can and do give unjust levels of damages.

lakecresva3• 3 years ago

It is better because arbitration agreements in a competitive employment market makes wages to be pushed higher or consumer prices to be pushed lower.

Prove it.

A very small fraction of civil cases are resolved by jury verdict. If the plaintiff's case has merit, the point is to get the other side to settle. You sound like a big markets guy. What could be more fair than the parties working out a settlement deal between themselves? No middleman or arbitrator needed.

kevinventullo• 3 years ago

Of course, all those savings from avoided trials will go directly into employees’ pockets and not shareholders’.

advisedwang• 3 years ago

Looks like we might be getting a return to the Lochner era, where the "right to form contracts" was used to strike down state laws forbidding child labour, setting working hours maximums, creating minimum wages etc.

CA's Prohibition on Workplace Arbitration Agreements Overturned by 9th Circuit

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