U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Case of Compelled Arbitration of Discrimination Claims
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to revisit the issue of a whether a union, through a collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”), can waive an individual member’s right to present an employment discrimination claim to a jury, and to proceed to union-run arbitration, instead. The Court granted leave to hear this argument in 14 Penn Plaza LLV v. Pyett, a case arising out of the Second Circuit, the Federal appeals court in New York.
The history of this issue began in 1974 in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Alexander v. Gardner-Denver, where the Court held that a union could NOT waive a union member’s right to a jury in a CBA. In 1991, the Court, in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., held that an individual, as opposed to a union, could waive the right to a jury in an employment discrimination case. In 1998, in Wright v. Universal Maritime Services Corp., the Court was once again presented with a CBA-wavier of the right to a jury, but declined to revisit the issue of enforceability.
Following Wright, the lower circuit courts have almost unanimously recognized that, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decisions, an individual may waive the right to a jury, but a union may not do so on that individual’s behalf. In fact, the Second Circuit in Pyett was confirming that exact point of law. Many states, however, including New York, have arrived at conflicting results. Through the upcoming decisions of the Court in Pyett, we shall arrive at a definitive decision on the issue of a union-negotiated wavier of the right to a jury in employment discrimination cases.
