You may have a situation where not only you have been the victim of sexual harassment in the workplace, but your coworkers may also have had other negative experiences with the same employer. Can all of you jointly sue the employer for workplace sexual harassment in what is called a class action or collective action?
It depends. If you and your coworkers each have an employment contract with the offending employer, the fine print may contain an arbitration clause that prohibits bringing a class action against your employer. What does having an arbitration clause mean? It means that any dispute you have with your employer must be resolved one-on-one in a private setting by a neutral arbitrator or panel of arbitrators. The arbitrator(s) may be selected by your employer or jointly by you and the employer from a list of arbitrators. You may have given up the right to file a complaint in state or federal court, where a jury of your peers decides the merits of your claims. Theoretically, it is more favorable to have your claims resolved by a jury than an arbitrator or arbitrators selected by your employer.
The Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis Decision
The Supreme Court of the United States in Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis, recently considered whether employment contracts that require one-on-one arbitration for resolving disputes are enforceable if their effect is to prevent several employees from jointly suing their employer. The opinion began with the following questions:
Should employees and employers be allowed to agree that any disputes between them will be resolved through one-on-one arbitration? Or should employees always be permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions, no matter what they agreed with their employers?
The employees involved in the Epic Systems case argued that the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), which secures employees’ right to organize unions and bargain collectively, gave them the right to collective action. The employers argued that the Federal Arbitration Act permitted a bar to collective legal action. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch, held that the NLRA does not give employees a right to class actions. Rather, the Federal Arbitration Act provides that arbitration agreements must be enforced according to their terms—including terms providing for individualized arbitration.
Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, released the following statement on the day the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Epic Systems:
“Today, the Supreme Court has taken away a powerful tool for women to fight discrimination at work. Instead of banding together with coworkers to push back against sexual harassment, pay discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, racial discrimination, wage theft, and more, employees may now be forced behind closed doors into an individual, costly – and often secret– arbitration process. This will stack the deck in favor of the employer. For all working people, the right to join a class or collective action is an indispensable tool to advance fairness, justice, and equality at work. For women workers, however, the stakes are particularly high. Women often face discrimination that is difficult to detect, like pay discrimination, or suffer from sexual harassment and face retaliation for reporting it. As mandatory arbitration is forced on growing numbers of employees as a condition of employment, the Supreme Court should strengthen rather than undermine the rights of workers to challenge insidious and often widespread civil rights violations.”
In Florida, if you are a non-union employee, have an employment contract, or mandatory arbitration is a condition of your employment, then your ability to sue your employer along with your coworkers for workplace sexual harassment is limited by the Epic Systems decision. Not all arbitration clauses are written the same and some companies are e-mailing their arbitration agreement to employees and telling them that if they continue to be employed there, they are deemed to have accepted the terms. If you and your coworkers are experiencing sexual harassment, you should seek legal counsel to determine whether you are restricted from raising a workplace sexual harassment claim as a class action. We are here to help you figure out the available legal avenues if you find yourself in this situation.