Airline Baggage Handlers Exempt from Mandatory Arbitration

Latrice Saxon sued Southwest Airlines in court alleging Southwest failed to properly pay overtime wages to ramp supervisors. She is a supervisor of ramp agents for Southwest Airlines and part of her job duties included physically loading and unloading cargo on and off airplanes that travel across the country.

While the Federal Arbitration Act allows employers and employees to make agreements for mandatory arbitration of workplace disputes, there is an exemption for workers who engage or foreign or interstate commerce.

The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that airline baggage handlers are a “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” and therefore exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act. (Justice Barrett did not participate since she sat on the Court of Appeals that heard the Saxon case before getting to the Supreme Court). Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, No. 21-309 (June 6, 2022).

Amazon, Uber and Lyft filed briefs looking for possible guidance how the law might apply to people who work for them. However, the decision is narrowly focused and there is no guidance how this law might apply to “gig” workers in these industries.