Source: https://sanfordheisler.com/employee-class-actions-will-supreme-court-cut-heart-new-deal/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 12:53:00+00:00

Document:
Will the Supreme Court Cut Out the “[H]eart of the New Deal”?
Home » Blog » Employee Class Actions: Will the Supreme Court Cut Out the “[H]eart of the New Deal”?
But in recent years, the Supreme Court has let corporations use arbitration agreements as a shield against class-action lawsuits. In 2011, in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Court held that states cannot extend the right to pursue class-actions to consumers who have signed class-action waivers, even when these waivers are buried in Dickensian-length fine print. Two years later, in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, the Supreme Court upheld a class-action waiver routinely used by American Express, even though the plaintiffs demonstrated that a class-action lawsuit was their only cost-effective means for pursuing valid legal claims.
Concepcion and Italian Colors have emboldened companies to insert class-action waivers into employment as well as consumer contracts. And they have done so on a dramatic scale: approximately 25 million workers now have employment contracts containing class-action waivers.
One of these workers is Jacob Lewis, a Wisconsin-based employee of software giant Epic Systems, and the named plaintiff in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis. Lewis, like countless coworkers, signed a standard form employment contract forfeiting his right to pursue wage-and-hour claims against Epic Systems on a class or collective basis. But when Epic Systems then denied him overtime pay, Lewis decided to fight back. In February 2015, he sued Epic Systems on behalf of himself and similarly-situated employees and argued that the class-action waiver they had all signed was legally void. A federal district court judge agreed, and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act guarantees employees the right to engage in class and collective actions. Epic Systems appealed and, on January 13, 2017, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The one point on which all sides agree is that the stakes of the case are high. At stake is a bedrock principle of the New Deal—the conviction, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, that “[l]iberty requires opportunity to make a living . . . which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.” Today, in the midst of weakened unions and record wealth inequality, the Supreme Court would do well to respect Section VII and the values it embodies.
 Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, cert. granted, No. 16-285 (argued Oct. 2, 2017).
 29 U.S.C. § 157 (emphasis added).
 See Lewis v. Epic Sys. Corp., 823 F.3d 1147, 1152 (7th Cir. 2016), cert. granted, 137 S. Ct. 809 (2017) (citing cases).
 See Hiro N. Aragaki, “The Federal Arbitration Act as Procedural Reform,” 89 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1939 (2014).
 Stephen A. Miller and Haryle Kaldis, “Supreme Court Examines Intersection of Class Waivers and Employees’ Rights,” The Legal Intelligencer (December 24, 2017), available at: https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/sites/thelegalintelligencer/2017/12/04/supreme-court-examines-intersection-of-class-waivers-and-employees-rights/.
 Morris v. Ernst & Young, LLP, 834 F.3d 975, 983 (9th Cir. 2016).
 Murphy Oil USA, Inc. v. N.L.R.B., 808 F.3d 1013, 1016 (5th Cir. 2015).
 NLRB v. City Disposal Sys., Inc., 465 U.S. 822, 835 (1984).
 Epic Systems Co. v. Lewis, 2017 WL 4882790, 7-9 (U.S. Oral. Arg., Oct. 2, 2017).

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 157
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.