A Sixth Circuit opinion filed this week reaffirms what experienced Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) attorneys have known for some time: when it comes to employer arbitration programs, they are not always the panacea that employers (and their lawyers) believe them to be. In Taylor v. Pilot Corp. et al., Case No. 16-5326, a plaintiff-employee filed a FLSA collective action against her employer. As is typical, she promptly asked the court to authorize the sending of notice of the lawsuit to other “similarly situated” employees, asking if they wanted to participate, or “opt in,” to the lawsuit. The defendant employer opposed, arguing in part that numerous putative collective action members were party to arbitration agreements that prevented them from participating in class, collective, or group actions. The district court nevertheless authorized sending the notice – including to those employees who had agreed to arbitrate any disputes they had with the defendant on an individual basis. The Sixth Circuit declined to disturb the district court’s decision to send notice to employees with individual arbitration agreements, holding that it lacked jurisdiction to do so because conditional certification decisions under the FLSA, unlike class certification decisions under Rule 23, are not subject to interlocutory appeal. The net effect is a ruling that arguably shifts the court’s role, tacitly authorizing broad notice programs in FLSA collective actions to include employees who admittedly may not be able to participate in the litigation due to an agreement to arbitrate.
