Hugh Baran Considers Effect of Recent Ruling on Transportation Worker Exemption

Hugh Baran (’19), Senior Staff Attorney with National Employment Law Project, was quoted in Law360 regarding an Eleventh Circuit decision suggesting the Federal Arbitration Act may not cover “last-mile” delivery drivers (“Arbitration Act’s Transportation Worker Carveout Splits Courts,” June 29). “That threshold determination will either let workers continue to challenge lawbreaking by transportation industry employers in court collectively, or they will be forced into secret individual arbitration where there is no judge or jury, and where they cannot band together. . . . One of the things that is strange to me about this decision is it insists that it’s being very faithful to the statutory text, but it then reads this new requirement that workers ‘actually engage’ in the transport of goods interstate. The word ‘actually’ is not in the statute.”
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