Tala Doumani is a student at Harvard Law School.
On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Southwest Airlines’s appeal to reverse a 7th Circuit ruling that held its workers suing the airline for overtime pay were exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The case, Southwest Airlines Co v. Saxon, is set to settle a circuit court split on how attenuated baggage supervisors are from interstate commerce.
The FAA requires the enforcement of employee arbitration agreements but exempts “seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” Southwest Airlines workers claim an exemption under this provision of the FAA as they “engage in interstate commerce” in their critical role of loading and unloading plane cargo. Southwest, on the other hand, argued that the exemption only applied to workers directly involved in the actual operation of the planes. In a parallel case involving Lufthansa Airlines, the 5th Circuit held the workers not exempt from the FAA. While a number of Justices appeared skeptical of Southwest’s reasoning, other members of the Court, including Justice Gorsuch, expressed discomfort with the employees’ definition of “engaging in interstate commerce” as opening the definition too broadly to encompass a myriad of workers.
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August 30
Seattle teachers vote to authorize a strike days before the school year begins; BNSF Railway’s AI dispatching system puts workers in danger; and a California court finds that the DOL’s pay cuts for non-citizen farmworkers are unlawful.
August 28
Calls for a “token tax” on AI consumption grow and the number of Amazon workers on federal aid explodes.
August 27
NLRB GC targets Biden-era precedent; Starbucks Workers United calls for boycott; Encore Boston Harbor workers authorize strike
August 26
Trump administration proposes $103,000 H-1B visa fee after court blocks earlier attempt; Illinois governor signs law enabling state investment in AFL-CIO housing trust; Deloitte pays $21.5 million to settle DOJ probe alleging DEI-related discrimination in federal contracts.
August 25
Hyundai workers reach a tentative agreement; Federal-sector unions sue the Trump Administration over OPM rule changes; Federal judge dismisses a teachers’ union free speech suit.
August 24
Boeing engineers and technicians reject contract proposals and authorize a strike; Ninth Circuit holds that unions charged under 8(b)(4)(D) cannot invoke the work-preservation defense to disregard 10(k) determination.