Opinion ID: 765398
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Effect of Arbitration Clause on Jurisdiction

Text: 24 One of several bases upon which the district court relied in granting summary judgment to the defendants was the provision in the CBA requiring arbitration of disputes. The district court reasoned that because the CBA was binding on the parties and called for the arbitration of all disputes between defendants and the covered employees, the arbitration clause deprived the court of jurisdiction to hear the merits of Bratten's lawsuit. For this proposition, the district court relied primarily on Austin v. Owens-Brockway Glass Container, Inc., 78 F.3d 875, 880-85 (4th Cir. 1996), in which a divided Fourth Circuit determined that a union could effectively waive its members' right to chose a judicial forum for a statutory claim. 25 The district court erred in concluding that it was without jurisdiction to hear Bratten's claims. Shortly before all briefs in this appeal were filed, we handed down our decision in Penny v. United Parcel Serv., 128 F.3d 408 (6th Cir. 1997), in which we joined the overwhelming majority of the courts of appeal [which] have determined that employees covered by CBAs containing mandatory arbitration clauses retain the right to pursue statutory employment discrimination claims in federal court[.] Blakely v. USAirways, Inc., 23 F. Supp.2d 560, 574 (W.D. Pa. 1998) (collecting cases). In Penny, we explicitly rejected Austin, and held that an employee whose only obligation to arbitrate is contained in a collective bargaining agreement retains the right to obtain a judicial determination of his rights under a statute such as the ADA. Penny, 128 F.3d at 414. Penny fully set forth the oft-repeated reasons why Austin's analysis was unsound (id. at 411-14), and we will not again do so here. 1 26 Even if we had not already decided Penny, we would reach the same Conclusion because the Supreme Court's recent decision in Wright implicitly overruled Austin anyway. See Quint v. A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., 172 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 1999) (same argument that prevailed in Austin was definitively rejected by Wright). Although the parties in this case have not briefed the effect of Wright on this case, they did address Wright at oral argument. 27 In Wright, the Court held that a longshoreman was not barred from suing his employer under the ADA despite a general arbitration clause in the collective bargaining agreement negotiated between his employer and his union. The agreement in Wright provided that [m]atters under dispute which cannot be promptly settled between the Local and an individual Employer shall, no later than 48 hours after such Discussion, be referred in writing covering the entire grievance to a Port Grievance Committee[.] Wright, 119 S. Ct. at 393. Additionally, the agreement stated that [i]t is the intention and purpose of all parties hereto that no provision or part of this Agreement shall be violative of any Federal or State Law. Id. 28 The Court held that the usual presumption of arbitrability in this context does not extend beyond the reach of the principal rationale that justifies it, which is that arbitrators are in a better position thancourts to interpret the terms of a CBA. Id. at 395 (emphasis in original). Accordingly, the Court held that workers' statutory claims for employment discrimination are not subject to a presumption of arbitrability. Id. at 396. Instead, the Court determined that if a union were to waive members' statutory rights at all, then at the very least, the waiver must be clear and unmistakable. Id. (quotations and citation omitted). It bears emphasis that the Court explicitly declined to address the issue as to whether such a clear and unmistakable waiver of an employee's statutory rights could even be enforceable. Id. at 397. 29 Based on the facts presented in Wright, the Court held that the collective bargaining agreement did not contain a clear and unmistakable waiver of plaintiff's federal forum rights because: (1) the clause providing for arbitration of [m]atters under dispute was too general and could be understood to mean matters in dispute under the contract [as opposed to substantive statutory rights]; (2) the agreement contained no explicit incorporation of statutory antidiscrimination requirements; and (3) compliance with the ADA was not an express contractual commitment. Id. at 396-97. For these reasons, a unanimous Court determined that the arbitration clause in Wright did not preclude the plaintiff from pursuing redress in federal court. 30 Were we to assume arguendo that a clear and unmistakable waiver of the covered employees' rights to a judicial forum to litigate federal statutory claims could be enforceable, we are convinced that the CBA here would fail to reach this demanding standard for at least two reasons. First, as was also the case in Wright, compliance with the ADA is not an express contractual commitment in the CBA. At best, Article II, Section 5 obligates defendants to refrain from disability discrimination-but only within the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although there are some commonalities between conduct prohibited by the ADA and that prohibited by Title VII, the statutes are far from identical. Compare 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b) (outlining discriminatory practices prohibited by ADA) with 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 (listing discriminatory practices prohibited by Title VII). Moreover, post-Wright courts appear to be in agreement that a statute must specifically be mentioned in a CBA for it to even approach Wright's clear and unmistakable standard. See, e.g., Quint,172 F.3d at 9 (agreement did not explicitly mention ADA or other federal anti-discrimination statutes); Giles v. City of New York, 41 F. Supp.2d 308, 311-12 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (list of covered grievances did not clearly include [Fair Labor Standards Act claims] or other statutory claims); Beason v. United Techs. Corp., 37 F. Supp.2d 127, 130 (D. Conn. 1999) (agreement did specifically refer to federal or state anti-disability discrimination statutes). Defendants assert that Article II, Section 5 of the CBA was amended to include a prohibition against disability discrimination in 1992 in response to the passage of the ADA. That could very well be true, but under a clear and unmistakable standard, the ADA and other statutory claims must be expressly recounted in the CBA. 31 Second, Article II, Section 5-which is the only plausible section where a waiver of statutory claims can be found in the CBA-is a wholly separate provision from the grievance resolution procedure set forth in Article III. Indeed, Article III does not mention statutory claims, but only states in boilerplate fashion that [a]ny grievance arising under the terms of this contract or an alleged violation thereof shall be handled in the following manner[.] J.A. at 256. As was the case in Wright, this arbitration clause is very general and could be understood to mean matters in dispute under the contract. Wright, 119 S.Ct. at 396. Simply put, including a provision in a collective bargaining agreement thatprevents discrimination against employees under a federal statute is not the same as requiring union members to arbitrate such statutory claims. Beason, 37 F. Supp.2d at 131 (emphasis in original). 32 For the above reasons, we are convinced that the CBA did not divest the district court of jurisdiction to hear Bratten's lawsuit, and the district court erred in concluding otherwise.