CNBC by Tucker Higgins 4/24/2019
Supreme Court’s conservatives limit workers’ ability to resolve disputes collectively through arbitration
The Supreme Court on Wednesday handed a victory to business in a 5-4 ruling along ideological lines that held that workers are not entitled to resolve disputes through class arbitration in cases where their arbitration agreement is ambiguous.
The closely-watched case is the latest in a long string of rulings at the top court strengthening the power of firms to compel their employees to resolve disputes through individual arbitration, a practice that businesses argue is more efficient and worker advocates say enables abuse to go unchecked.
Arbitration is a dispute resolution mechanism that is less formal than the court system which generally favors employers.
The decision follows the court’s landmark ruling on the issue in the 2018 case Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, which held, also 5-4, that arbitration agreements requiring workers to submit to individual arbitration must be enforced.
The opinion drew a flurry of criticism from the court’s liberal wing, with each of the four Democratic appointees penning a dissent. But Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion for the court, downplayed the criticism, arguing that the “opinion today is far from the watershed†the dissenters claimed it to be.
Roberts argued that under the court’s precedent arbitration is a matter of “consent,†and that consent cannot be inferred from an agreement that is ambiguous. The decision overturned a ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that, under state law, ambiguity in a contract should be resolved against the party that drafted the agreement.
More:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/scotus-conservatives-limit-class-arbitration-in-divided-decision.html
