Justices exempt bakery-truck drivers from arbitration requirement

OPINION ANALYSIS

The justices on Friday dominated in favor of a bunch of truck drivers who transport items for Surprise Bread of their arbitration dispute. Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St. is one other of the court docket’s quite a few circumstances deciphering the Federal Arbitration Act’s command that courts implement necessary pre-dispute arbitration agreements. Bissonnette includes an exception from the FAA for any “class of staff engaged in international or interstate commerce,” and the query in Bissonnette  is whether or not that exception activates the character of the work the staff do or as an alternative on the character of their employer’s enterprise. The employees right here drive supply vehicles, carrying (amongst different issues), Surprise Bread. They argue that they’re transportation staff, as a result of they drive vehicles for a residing; the employers argue that they don’t seem to be, as a result of they work within the bakery {industry}.

Friday’s determination in favor of the employees got here in a brief unanimous opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts began by mentioning that the court docket at all times has restricted the exemption to “transportation staff,” reflecting the court docket’s view that the “basic phrase ‘class of staff engaged in … commerce’ is managed and outlined by reference to the precise classes ‘seamen’ and ‘railroad staff’ that precede it.”

He then famous that the court docket’s most up-to-date determination within the space (involving baggage handlers for Southwest Airways) “expressly declined to undertake an ‘industry-wide’ method of the type [the employers] advance right here,” largely as a result of the statute’s “language focuses on the efficiency of labor moderately than the {industry} of the employer.” Pointing to the examples of Amazon and Walmart – “which each promote merchandise of their very own and transport merchandise offered by third events” – Roberts sugggested that figuring out whether or not any explicit employer is within the transportation {industry} usually could be fact-intensive, requiring “[e]xtensive discovery” and “[m]ini-trials” that might make FAA litigation unacceptably “gradual” and “costly.”

Lastly, Roberts rejected the argument (mentioned with some curiosity by Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the oral argument) that the exemption needs to be restricted to a selected {industry} as a result of the references within the statute to “seamen” and “railroad staff” matched industry-specific regulatory programs that have been in place when Congress adopted the FAA in 1925. Roberts dismissed that argument out of hand, emphasizing how “unusual” it will be “to learn the conspicuous absence of … industry-specific language in § 1 as an indication that Congress outlined the exemption on an industrywide foundation.”

In sum, Roberts concluded, “[a] transportation employee needn’t work within the transportation {industry} to fall inside the exemption from the FAA.” Accordingly, the court docket unanimously reversed the opposite determination of the court docket of appeals.