HuffPo‘s Cristian Farias reports that SCOTUS will be accepting three cases centering around an important point – workers suing employers:
If you’re one of the likely millions of workers who are contractually bound to go it alone in a legal fight with your employer, the Supreme Court may lift that barrier and allow you to take your boss to court along with other workers.
The justices on Friday agreed to hear three cases that, taken together, could relieve workers of so-called class-action waivers: contract provisions that prohibit workers from suing as a group over workplace violations, leaving them instead to arbitrate grievances on their own.
Cristian quotes one justification for the invalidation of these waivers:
“It often isn’t worth it for employees to bring their workplace disputes on an individual basis, because it costs more to litigate the case than the worker stands to recover,” explained Charlotte Garden, a labor law professor at Seattle University. “For these workers, an individual arbitration agreement means they can’t realistically bring their case at all.”
But this doesn’t actually strike me as the most important reason for invalidating the waivers, as it’s a simple economic argument. Without regard to actual law, keeping in mind that American government ideally exists an instrumentality of justice, and that data analysis arguments are much stronger (i.e., accurate) when there’s more data, and very ineffective when looking at single data points, the invalidation of the waivers would permit the detection of patterns of wrong-doing by employers, because the data behind the employees’ grievances may be aggregated and analyzed properly. By forcing individual arbitration hearings, the possibility of a company-wide crime being detected is greatly reduced, and thus justice thwarted.
Perhaps one of the formal defenses put up by corporations will have to do with the endangerment of profitability, but I view this as irrelevant. The judicial sector should not concern itself with the profitability of companies as a primary factor, even perhaps not at all. Similarly, companies are of the private sector, a sector of society which has no formal requirements to supervise justice, although if they violate justice then they run the risk of penalties; still, the point is that justice is not a primary focus for most companies (although I tend to believe the wiser companies do root out injustice within their corporate boundaries, and benefit thereby).
While considering these arguments, a question of context occurred to me, and I can use a real-world example. As discussed here, Chief Justice Roberts, when still a corporate attorney, was a leader in the effort to make legitimate clauses in contracts specifying that private arbitrators must be used in case of disputes, and that the legal system was out of bounds. This is to the advantage of corporations, who felt that class action lawsuits were used for improper reasons; rather than lobby for some sort of reform, they decided to simply ban the use of the legal system altogether.
In his role as a corporate attorney, it’s hard to fault his work. After all, justice is not his gig in that role. Saving companies from potentially crippling awards was his business.
But as a member of SCOTUS? Or even a judge at all? If he were to be faced with a case in which invalidation of private arbitrator clauses was requested, and stare decisis did not apply, would he rule for or against, given that justice (in my opinion) calls for the invalidation of such clauses? Would he understand how different roles require different behaviors?
And, just for giggles, suppose he ruled to invalidate. How many folks would claim he was terribly inconsistent, given his important role in making such clauses acceptable, not realizing his role change necessitated his ruling?
