When Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, it gave older Americans a broad right to sue for discrimination. But the Supreme Court has narrowed that right with a 5-to-4 ruling that union members cannot file lawsuits when their contracts call for arbitration of age-discrimination claims. The decision, which reversed the court’s precedents, sets back antidiscrimination law significantly.
A group of New York City building-services workers sued after they were moved from positions like night lobby watchman to less desirable assignments, including cleaning jobs. The workers charged, among other claims, that they had been reassigned based on age.
The contract negotiated by the workers’ union required employees to submit claims of discrimination to binding arbitration. The workers sued in federal court, asserting that their job reassignments violated the federal age-discrimination statute and other laws. The employer moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that the union contract required that the claims be arbitrated.
The Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the motion, citing a 1974 Supreme Court case, Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Company. It held that collective bargaining agreements cannot waive workers’ rights to sue under federal antidiscrimination laws.
The Supreme Court reversed, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas. In the majority’s view, the union agreed to the arbitration clause, and it was binding on all of its members.
The four dissenters, in an opinion by Justice David Souter, had by far the better argument. Rights that Congress grants, they argued, cannot be waived in a collective-bargaining contract. Union contracts represent group rights — and unions often sacrifice the interests of a minority of their members for the good of the whole.
Laws like the Age Discrimination in Employment Act give individuals a right to sue for discrimination — no matter what deal their union decides to strike for the workers as a group. The dissenters protested that the majority was too quick to abandon the well-established, 35-year-old precedent of Gardner-Denver.
The fight over who will hear these claims matters because workers who have been discriminated against are more likely to get a fair hearing in federal court than in arbitration. That is why employers are eager to arbitrate — and it may be why the court’s most conservative justices voted in favor of compulsory arbitration.
When Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, it protected Americans from discrimination on the basis of age — and gave them the chance to vindicate that right in federal court. There is no reason to believe, as the court’s majority apparently does, that Congress intended this right to sue to be so weak that unions could freely bargain it away.
No comments:
Post a Comment