By John B. Lewis
In two prior blogs, we have focused on a dispute over federal court jurisdiction to confirm or vacate an arbitration award under Section 9 and Section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The dispute resulted in a Fifth Circuit opinion that ultimately made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. See our blog post on Nov. 9, 2021. Now the Fifth Circuit has taken on a new FAA issue – who are the “parties” to the controversy for purposes of determining federal court jurisdiction? Does it include state-court pleadings or only “the parties to the petition to compel arbitration”? See ADT L.L.C. v. Richmond, No. 21-10023 (5th Cir. Nov. 10, 2021).
Telesforo Aviles was employed by ADT to install home security systems. At some point, Aviles began spying on customers with cameras he set up. Upon discovering this, ADT terminated Aviles, but only after over 200 customers were impacted. Kamala Richmond believed she and her family were victims. They sued ADT and Aviles in a Texas court seeking over $1 million in damages. The Richmonds’ contract with ADT, however, contained an arbitration provision. ADT then filed an action under Section 4 of the FAA in federal court based on complete diversity between the Richmonds and ADT, a citizen of Florida and Delaware.
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Years ago, employers argued unsuccessfully that plaintiffs should not be able to pursue so-called hybrid claims pursuing both Rule 23 opt-out classes and Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) opt-in collective claims at the same time. They noted that combining the two would create procedural anomalies and that doing so would make case resolution unwieldy. They lost that argument, but a recent case demonstrates that they were probably right.
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For many years, state and federal courts in California have opposed arbitration and have manufactured frameworks under which they become unenforceable despite the clear directives of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and countless Supreme Court cases. While a string of Supreme Court cases over the past decade gave employers some respite, the Ninth Circuit has now issued a split decision in which it has devised yet another means of trying to evade the FAA’s mandate.
Only three years ago, the Supreme Court reversed the holdings of a large number of lower courts and held that class action waivers in arbitration agreements were enforceable. Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612 (2018). We blogged about that decision here. With the Supreme Court’s ruling, many employers either adopted such agreements or began to enforce their preexisting agreements more effectively. Particularly in the realm of Fair Labor Standards Act litigation, these agreements became an important part of the defense, providing a counterbalance to courts’ frequent application of the reduced standards for “conditional certification” and the resulting undue economic pressure placed on defendants to settle.
The United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin has refused to grant certification in a two-year-old dispute over uniforms for airline personnel. In 
A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel ruled that Uber Technologies drivers don’t fall within the Section 1 exemption of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to mandatory arbitration because they are not a class of workers “engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” Accordingly, the drivers were properly compelled by the district court to arbitrate their claims. Capriole v. Uber Technologies, Inc., Case No. 20-16030 (9th Cir. Aug. 2, 2021).
