The US Supreme Court decided three cases this term that speak to the issue of mandatory arbitration clauses. Two of them arose in the context of employment. The "odd case out" here, a piece of commercial arbitration between two businesses, came down on January 8, when SCOTUS announced its opinion in Henry Schein v. Archer. This was a unanimous opinion saying that there is no "wholly groundless" exception to the general rule that the arbitrator gets to decide the threshold question of arbitrability. Henry Schein arose out of a dispute between a business that distributes dental equipment and one that manufactures such equipment. I mention this -- indeed I mention the case itself, chiefly to encourage reflection over a sort of knee-jerk reaction one encounters to employment arb cases. "Oh, there is such a gross disparity of bargaining power here! The employer needed a job and signed the contract of adhesion they put in front of him to get it!" I...
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I gather there was an important 2005 decision of the US Supreme Court regarding the internet. With my usual promptness I'm kind of catching up with it 14 years later/ Yes, the tech has changed a lot in 14 years, but the changes have made the decision more important, not less. They have raised issues such as how the decision applies to new unexpected variants of internet use. The gist of it is that the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Thomas, upheld a decision by the FCC that cable companies that sell broadband internet services do NOT provide a telecommunications service as defined by the Communications Act of 1934. [Mark THAT date.] I'm just laying down a marker. I'll have to come back to the subject. https://casetext.com/case/national-cable-telecommunications-assn-v-brand-x-internet-services-4
As promised, I'll write today of some of SCOTUS' wrestling this term with issues of statutory construction. In the realm of Labor Law, this was the term of Encino Motorcars v. Navarro , a case that turns on the meaning of an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act. This is important, even though the specific category of worker involved may not include very many people, because the New Deal era legislation continues to provide a classification system in a dynamic world of work. The relevant requirement of the FLSA is that which requires overtime pay for workers who don't fall within exemptions., and that exempts "any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles trucks, or farm implements...." if employed by a dealership primarily engaged in selling said autos or implements. The specific problem is that auto dealers including the petitioner Encino nowadays employ so-called "service advisors." As the ...