Wise v. Tesla Motors, Inc., 2025 WL 3707196 (Cal. Ct. App. 2025)
Talia Shayla Alexis Wise sued her former employer (Tesla) for disability discrimination and related claims. In response, Tesla filed a motion to compel arbitration, which the trial court denied after determining that the arbitration agreement should be read together with a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), which contained unconscionable terms that permeated the arbitration
In Hohenshelt v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court held that California Code of Civil Procedure Section 1281.98—a do-or-die statute requiring employers to pay arbitration fees within 30 days or waive the right to arbitrate altogether—is not preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). While it is not the precise outcome employers may have hoped for, many employers are correctly viewing the decision as
Colon-Perez v. Security Indus. Specialists, 108 Cal. App. 5th 575 (2025)
The employer in this case (SIS) challenged Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 1281.98 (requiring an employer to pay arbitration fees within 30 days or waive the right to arbitrate) on various grounds, including that the statute is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). This issue is currently pending before the California
The Ninth Circuit recently issued an opinion that signals some movement in the direction away from enforcing employment-related arbitration agreements.
In Miller v. Amazon.com, Ca
se No. 2:21-cv-00204-BJR, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying Amazon’s motion to compel arbitration in a case brought by Amazon Flex delivery drivers who made last-leg deliveries of goods shipped from other states or countries
When the California Supreme Court decided Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348 (2014), this June, some legal commentators assumed that employees could not waive pre-litigation claims under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). Those assumptions may have been premature. As we noted here, at least one federal court refused to apply Iskanian forcing an employee’s individual PAGA claims
Horton Hears an Employer Victory
Last December, the Fifth Circuit issued its long-awaited decision in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. NLRB, holding that employers may require employees to sign arbitration agreements categorically waiving the right to pursue employment claims in a collective or class action. In doing so, the Fifth Circuit’s rejected the NLRB’s opinion that such agreements violate employees’ right under Section 7 of
In a post last week, we noted a recent trend of federal courts strongly enforcing employment arbitration agreements under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). That trend continues in Richards v. Ernst & Young, LLP, Case No. 11-17530 (9th Cir. Aug. 21, 2013), which holds that a defendant’s pretrial participation in litigation does not, absent prejudice to the plaintiff, necessarily waive the defendant’s right to
AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011)
In this landmark new opinion, the United States Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) prohibits states from conditioning the enforceability of an arbitration agreement on the availability of class action arbitration procedures. Although this case arose in the consumer context (it involved AT&T’s charging sales tax for “free phones”), it has far-reaching