Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made it clear in her thirty-page dissent for the recent Epic Systems v. Lewis decision: taking away workers’ rights to class-action lawsuits is bad news. Allowing companies to force arbitration for worker disputes puts even more power in the hands of powerful employers.
The decision came down this Monday, but it looks like it won’t take long for us to get to see the consequences of this ruling in action. About 10,000 workers sued fast-food burrito chain Chipotle for wage theft, but almost 3,000 of them may be kicked off the case thanks to those tricky arbitration agreements. HuffPost explains:
But Chipotle has been arguing that 2,814 workers in that group do not have a valid claim because they signed class- and collective-action waivers when they accepted their jobs. Late last year, the company provided the court with a 62-page list of workers in the lawsuit who had supposedly signed away their rights and asked the judge to exclude them from the proceedings.
The judge has not ruled on that request yet. But thanks to Justice Neil Gorsuch and the rest of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, Chipotle may soon get its wish. The judge in the case issued an order Wednesday inviting the parties to submit new briefs by June 6 in light of the Epic Systems ruling.
The reason why a large chunk of these workers may be removed from the case is that Chipotle started requiring workers to agree to arbitration in 2014. While most plaintiffs didn’t sign that same employment agreement, a few folks may be cut out of the case since the lawsuit was filed that same year.
Time will only show how exactly Epic Systems v. Lewis will impact these Chipotle workers. If the court sides with the company (which is very likely) these workers will be forced to go into private arbitration, which has been long used to exploit workers and their families.