When you draft employment arbitration agreements, it’s not enough to know what the law is. You should also know what the law will be at the time that someone challenges the agreement. Since this area of law changes continuously, that’s pretty hard to do without a crystal ball.

For a while, some courts in California were refusing to enforce arbitration agreements that did not attach a copy of the arbitration provider’s procedural rules. More recent cases, including Baltazar v. Forever 21, Inc., decided by the California Supreme Court in March 2016, dismiss that requirement. Now that that issue is supposedly resolved, the issue du jour is whether arbitration agreements can require employees to waive the right to bring a class action.

Last week, the Ninth Circuit issued a split opinion in Morris v. Ernst & Young saying that class action waivers violate the National Labor Relations Act. According to the two-justice majority, class action waivers violate § 7 of the Act, which states that:

“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”

While the National Labor Relations Board has taken the position that arbitration agreements are unenforceable in the non-union employment context, most courts to consider the issue have rejected that position as just another example of the Board going rogue. These include the Second,  Fifth, and Eighth Circuit Courts of Appeal. Even the California Supreme Court, in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation, approved such waivers for class actions (but not for the seemingly analogous claims under California’s Private Attorneys General Act).

So employees can waive their right to present employment claims to a jury individually, but not on a class-wide basis? How can that be? More importantly, what should employers drafting arbitration agreements do about class action waivers?

The split between the circuits makes it increasingly likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually address the issue. When that will happen and how the Court will be composed at the time is entirely unclear. So I plan to continue including class action waivers in arbitration agreements. But I will also include language inviting a court reviewing the agreement to strike any provisions that are inconsistent with applicable law as it exists at the time the agreement is being reviewed. My crystal ball says that’s the best way to go here.

Photo credit: fergregory / 123RF Stock Photo

[View source.]