Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis: Singled Out by Corporations and a Textualist Supreme Court, American Workers Are Left to Fend for Themselves

Grace O’Malley

In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (“Epic”), the United States Supreme Court considered whether employer-drafted arbitration agreements requiring employees to individually arbitrate disputes and thus barring collective legal actions were enforceable. The Court’s decision turned on whether arbitration agreements barring collective claims conflicted with the National Labor Relations Act’s (“NLRA”) guarantees for workers to engage in “concerted activities for . . . mutual aid or protection.” In Part I, this Note will discuss the three cases addressed by the decision in Epic. Part II will examine the language, history, and interpretations of the two statutes at issue: the NLRA and the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). Part III will review the five-justice majority’s decision in Epic, which held that the employer-drafted agreements were enforceable because the NLRA does not contain an express intention to displace the FAA, the NLRA does not guarantee workers a right to collective legal action, and, therefore, the arbitration agreements at issue should be enforced according to their terms. Part IV of this Note will argue this decision improperly narrowed the rights of workers using textualist analysis in a manner that was inconsistent with the intent of the NLRA and the FAA. This decision erroneously expanded the scope of the FAA by defining arbitration as presumptively bilateral rather than collective in nature even though this contention lacks support in the history and text of the FAA. On a policy level, this decision will have the unfortunate effect of hindering workers’ ability to enforce federal protections while insulating corporations and unscrupulous employers from liability.