Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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The end of summer turned out to be the beginning of the final stages of a crucial four-year-old argument over the use of arbitration, and the future of the conflict resolution process in U.S. contracts.

The judicial descendants of an early 2012 administrative decision by the National Labor Relations Board, which held that it was illegal to use class-action waivers in employment contracts that simultaneously require individualized arbitration to resolve workplace disputes, finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

And it happened en masse.

The petition for a writ of certiorari by a defendant employer in the first federal circuit court case that backed the NLRB’s decision—after multiple rejections that authorized class waivers led by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals—arrived at the nation’s top Court hours before the Labor Day weekend.