In Brian Griffoul v. Nrg Residential Solar Solutions the NJ Supreme court held that the Federal Arbitration Act applied to a lease by NJ residents of Solar PowqerPower equipment from a Delaware company, and held that a caluseclause requiring arbitration, and one precluding class actions wore valid and enforcableenforceable. It wrote that:
In another contextual clue, the employees’ underlying causes of action arise not under the NLRA but under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which permits the sort of collective action the employees wish topursueto pursue here. Yet they do not suggest that the FLSA displaces theArbitrationthe Arbitration Act, presumably because the Court has held that an identical collective action scheme does not prohibit individualized arbitration proceedings, see Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500
U. S. 20, 32. The employees’ theory also runs afoul of the rule that Congress “does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatoryschemeregulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions,” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468, as it would allow a catchall term in the NLRA to dictate the particulars of dispute resolution procedures in Article III courts or arbitration proceedings—matters that are usually left to, e.g., the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Arbitration Act, and the FLSA.
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The Court has rejected many efforts to manufacture conflicts between the Arbitration ActandAct and other federal statutes, see, e.g. American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 570 U. S. 228; and its §7 cases have generally involved efforts related to organizing and collective bargaining in the workplace, not the treatment of class or collective action procedures in court or arbitration, see, e.g., NLRB v. Washington Aluminum Co., 370 U. S. 9.
The Court’s opinion, authored by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch for the majority, resolved three cases that were argued together—together — Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis; Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris; and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA—in — in all of which an employee who had signed an arbitration agreement containing a class action waiver sought to litigate Fair Labor Standards Act and related state law claims through class or collective actions in federal court. The Seventh Circuit in Lewis and the Ninth Circuit in Morris had sided with the NLRB and the individual employees; the Fifth Circuit had rejected the NLRB’s view in Murphy Oil. Siding with the Fifth Circuit, the Court’s ruling requires employees who have signed arbitration agreements with their employers containing class action waivers to take their disputes to an arbitrator individually rather than as part of a putative class or collective action.
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Notably, the Court’s opinion discussed Congress’ ability to pass new legislation to reach a different result. In fact, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, reading her dissent from the bench, urged Congress to address the matter.
Even if Congress does not act, the Court’s rejection of the NLRA-based challenge does not mean that class action waivers will now be enforced uniformly. The Court acknowledged the FAA’s statutory exception, which permits arbitration agreements to be invalidated “upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” The Court held that exception inapplicable here because it includes only defenses that apply to “any contract” (such as duress or fraud), and the NLRA’s arguable attack only on class action waivers does not offer a general defense to contract enforcement. But general state-law contract doctrines such as procedural and substantive unconscionability have played a greater and greater role in disputes over arbitration agreements, and the Court’s decision does not affect those debates.
