Supreme Court Provides Roadmap For Avoiding Large PAGA Actions

On June 15, 2022, in Viking River Cruises vs. Moriana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 (with Justice Thomas the lone dissenter) that employers can compel arbitration of an employee's individual claims regarding labor code violations under California's Private Attorneys General Act.

As we previously reported (here), the case centered on Viking's efforts to enforce an arbitration agreement in which Moriana agreed to arbitrate "any dispute" arising from her Viking employment and further agreed that the arbitration would be bilateral, i.e. with no "class, collective, representative or private attorney general action" asserted (see prior analysis here). The California Supreme Court took up this precise issue in 2014 in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation. In Iskanian, the court decided in favor of the employee by striking the parties' PAGA-specific bilateral arbitration provision as inconsistent with California's PAGA law and public policy. Iskanian, however, was decided by