California employment case index

Arbitration agreements providing for individualized proceedings — including class- and collective-action waivers in the employment context — are enforceable under the FAA, and the NLRA does not override the FAA or render such agreements unlawful; courts must enforce the agreements according to their terms.

A provision in a predispute arbitration agreement that waives the right to seek public injunctive relief in any forum is contrary to California public policy and unenforceable (the “McGill rule”); and because that rule applies to contracts generally and does not single out arbitration, the FAA does not preempt it.

Iskanian v. CLS Transportation (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348 holds that class-action waivers in employment arbitration agreements are enforceable after Concepcion (abrogating Gentry), but a predispute waiver of a representative PAGA action is contrary to public policy and not preempted by the FAA, because a PAGA claim belongs to the state.

Concepcion preempts a categorical, arbitration-specific rule that a Berman-hearing waiver is per se unconscionable; but generally applicable unconscionability doctrine survives, and an arbitration agreement remains unenforceable if it is unreasonably one-sided. The court concluded this agreement’s waiver was markedly…

Three Oracle instructors living in Colorado and Arizona worked a limited number of days in California for their California-headquartered employer. Answering certified questions from the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court held that the Labor Code's overtime provisions apply to work performed in this state regardless of residence, and that those violations support a UCL claim – but that the UCL does not reach FLSA violations occurring in other states on these stipulated facts. The court confined its holding to overtime and to entire days and weeks worked in California.

The FAA preempts the Discover Bank rule. A state rule that conditions the enforceability of an arbitration agreement on the availability of classwide arbitration interferes with the fundamental attributes of arbitration and stands as an obstacle to the FAA’s objective of enforcing arbitration agreements according to…