Last year, Hogan Lovells’ Neal Katyal had to solve what he calls “a classic law school problem.” In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Katyal’s team had to make sense of two seemingly conflicting federal statutes in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Impacting an estimated 25 million employee contracts, the case was one of two litigations from the firm’s Washington, D.C., outfit that would fortify the future of arbitration agreements.
On one hand, the Federal Arbitration Act mandates that arbitration agreements are valid and enforceable. The National Labor Relations Act, on the other hand, protects workers’ rights to collectively organize for their mutual aid and protection. So when Epic Systems Corp.’s workers wanted to assemble into a class action despite individual arbitration agreements, the court had to decide which law applied.