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Page Number: 10

6 

VIKING RIVER CRUISES, INC. v. MORIANA 

Opinion of the Court 

arose  from  the  violation  she  suffered—and  to  dismiss  her 
other PAGA claims.  The trial court denied that motion, and 
the California Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that cate-
gorical waivers of PAGA standing are contrary to state pol-
icy  and  that  PAGA  claims  cannot  be  split  into  arbitrable 
individual  claims  and  nonarbitrable  “representative”
claims. 

This  ruling  was  dictated  by  the  California  Supreme
Court’s decision in Iskanian.  In that case, the court held 
that  pre-dispute  agreements  to  waive  the  right  to  bring
“representative”  PAGA  claims  are  invalid  as  a  matter  of 
public policy.  What, precisely, this holding means requires
some explanation.  PAGA’s unique features have prompted 
the development of an entire vocabulary unique to the stat-
ute, but the details, it seems, are still being worked out.  An 
unfortunate feature of this lexicon is that it tends to use the 
word  “representative”  in  two  distinct  ways,  and  each  of 
those  uses  of  the  term  “representative”  is  connected  with
one  of  Iskanian’s  rules  governing  contractual  waiver  of 
PAGA claims. 

In the first sense, PAGA actions are “representative” in
that  they  are  brought  by  employees  acting  as  representa-
tives—that  is,  as  agents  or  proxies—of  the  State.    But 
PAGA claims are also called “representative” when they are 
predicated on code violations sustained by other employees. 
In  the  first  sense,  “ ‘every  PAGA  action  is  . . .  representa-
tive’ ”  and  “[t]here  is  no  individual  component  to  a  PAGA
action,” Kim, 9 Cal. 5th, at 87, 459 P. 3d, at 1131 (quoting 
Iskanian,  59  Cal.  4th,  at  387,  327  P. 3d,  at  151),  because 
every PAGA claim is asserted in a representative capacity.
But when the word “representative” is used in the second 
way,  it  makes  sense  to  distinguish  “individual”  PAGA 
claims, which are premised on Labor Code violations actu-
ally  sustained  by  the  plaintiff,  from  “representative”  (or 
perhaps quasi-representative) PAGA claims arising out of 
events  involving  other  employees.   For  purposes  of  this