Saturns for Rickshaws: The Stakes in the Debate Over Predispute Employment Arbitration Agreements
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Description
The casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that the debate over predispute employment arbitration agreements ended in 1991, when the Supreme Court held in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp. that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 (FAA) requires enforcement of such agreements, even when they are obtained as a condition of employment, and would preclude employees or former employ from suing in court on their federal (or state) statutory discrimination claims. The plaintiff bar, however, proceeded to launch a decade-long effort to undo Gilmer, meeting with little success anywhere but the Ninth Circuit. One of the premises of their challenge was the fact that the Court in Gilmer had not decided the scope of the FAA' s section 1 exclusion of "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.'' That legal issue has now been laid to rest with the Supreme Court's decision in Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams. In Circuit City, the Court rejected the Ninth Circuit's reading that section 1 excluded all employment contracts from the FAA's reach, and agreed with the view of the other eleven circuits that such a broad exclusion cannot be squared with the provision's specific reference to the employment contracts of "seamen" and "railroad employees." This language, the Court reasoned, indicates a congressional intention to exclude only employment contracts of "transportation workers," i.e., other "class[es]" of workers directly engaged in interstate transportation function in the same way that seamen and railroad employees do. This article leaves for others the question whether the Court correctly interpreted the scope of the section 1 exclusion. Rather, the focus here is on the underlying policy debate that undoubtedly influenced the Justices, much as it influences the opponents of predispute agreements to arbitrate employment claims.
Source Publication
Alternative Dispute Resolution in the Employment Arena: Proceedings of the New York University 53rd Annual Conference on Labor
Source Editors/Authors
Samuel Estreicher, David Sherwyn
Publication Date
2004
Recommended Citation
Estreicher, Samuel, "Saturns for Rickshaws: The Stakes in the Debate Over Predispute Employment Arbitration Agreements" (2004). Faculty Chapters. 457.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/457
