NT Lakis Brief Urges Supreme Court To Overturn California’s Anti-Arbitration “Iskanian Rule”

NT Lakis lawyers have filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the Supreme Court in a case involving important issues of federal law governing workplace arbitration agreements.  Our brief urges the Court to review and reverse a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Bloomingdale’s v. Vitolo that applied the so-called “Iskanian rule,” a 2014 ruling by the California Supreme Court declaring that claims brought under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) cannot be subject to individual arbitration under any circumstances.

The controversial Iskanian rule holds that forcing individual arbitration of PAGA claims would defeat important public policy considerations — including empowering private parties to help enforce labor laws where the state does not have the resources to do so itself.  Applying the Iskanian rule, the Ninth Circuit in Bloomingdale’s refused to enforce a predispute arbitration agreement as to the plaintiff’s PAGA claims because it contained a class and representative action waiver.

Our brief urges the Supreme Court to review and reverse the Ninth Circuit, and in so doing to invalidate the Iskanian rule, which we contend is plainly inconsistent with the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).

A copy of our brief is available here.

Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.