Ninth Circuit Upholds Arbitration Pact, Narrowing California Limits on Employment-Only Claims
Updated
Updated · Ogletree Deakins · Jun 28
Ninth Circuit Upholds Arbitration Pact, Narrowing California Limits on Employment-Only Claims
2 articles · Updated · Ogletree Deakins · Jun 28
Summary
A Ninth Circuit panel held an employment arbitration agreement enforceable, reversing a lower-court view that it was unconscionably broad, indefinite and one-sided under California law.
The court said the phrase “including but not limited to” did not expand the pact beyond work disputes because the agreement specifically tied arbitration to hiring, employment, compensation and termination.
That employment-only scope also answered the duration and mutuality attacks, the panel said, because claims stop accruing when the job relationship ends and covered third parties are reached only in their employer-related roles.
The panel also upheld a clause barring arbitral awards from having preclusive or precedential effect, and said any invalid PAGA representative-action waivers could be severed rather than sink the entire agreement.
The ruling gives employers a clearer path to enforce arbitration agreements in California if they expressly confine them to employment-related claims, while limiting the reach of recent state-court decisions that struck down broader pacts.