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Page Number: 16.0

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VIKING RIVER CRUISES, INC. v. MORIANA 

Opinion of the Court 

But Moriana’s premise that PAGA creates a unitary pri-
vate cause of action is irreconcilable with the structure of 
the  statute  and  the  ordinary  legal  meaning  of  the  word 
“claim.”  California courts interpret PAGA  to provide em-
ployees  with  delegated  authority  to  assert  the  State’s 
claims on a representative basis, not an individual cause of 
action.  See,  e.g.,  Amalgamated  Transit,  46  Cal.  4th,  at 
1003, 209 P. 3d, at 943 (PAGA “is simply a procedural stat-
ute” that “does not create property rights or any other sub-
stantive  rights”).    And  a  PAGA  action  asserting  multiple 
code violations affecting a range of different employees does 
not constitute “a single claim” in even the broadest possible 
sense, because the violations asserted need not even arise 
from a common “transaction” or “nucleus of operative facts.” 
Lucky  Brand  Dungarees,  Inc.  v.  Marcel  Fashions  Group, 
Inc., 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 6) (internal quo-
tation marks omitted).6 

Viking’s  position,  on  the  other  hand,  elides  important 
structural differences between PAGA actions and class ac-
tions that preclude any straightforward application of our 
precedents  invalidating  prohibitions  on  class-action  waiv-
ers.  Class-action  procedure  allows  courts  to  use  a  repre-
sentative plaintiff ’s individual claims as a basis to “adjudi-
cate  claims  of  multiple  parties  at  once,  instead  of  in 
separate suits,” Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P. A. v. 
Allstate Ins. Co., 559 U. S. 393, 408 (2010).  This, of course, 
requires the certification of a class.  And because class judg-
ments  bind  absentees  with  respect  to  their  individual 

—————— 

6 California courts sometimes speak as though a PAGA action involves 
the assertion of “a single representative PAGA claim,” Williams v. Supe-
rior Court, 237 Cal. App. 4th 642, 649, 188 Cal. Rptr. 3d 83, 87 (2015).
But we are not required to take the labels affixed by state courts at face
value in determining whether state law creates a scheme at odds with 
federal law.  See, e.g., Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U. S. 363, 367–368 (1930). 
And in our view, this manner of speaking is another reflection of the still-
embryonic character of the language that has grown up around PAGA.