Judge: William D. Claster, Case: 21-01237757, Date: 2022-09-02 Tentative Ruling

1. Defendant People Care, LLC dba Firstlight Home Care's Petition to Compel Arbitration and Dismiss  ROA 32

2. Status Conference

Defendant People Care, LLC dba FirstLight Home Care’s petition to compel arbitration is DENIED.

Per the operative first amended complaint, this is a PAGA-only matter.  Following the United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (2022) 142 S.Ct. 1906, Defendant asks the Court to order Plaintiff’s PAGA claim to arbitration on an individual basis and dismiss the representative portion of her PAGA claim.

Section 3 of the parties’ arbitration agreement provides: “Private attorney general representative actions brought on behalf of the state under the California Labor Code are not arbitrable, not within the scope of this Agreement and may be maintained in a court of law.”  (Becker Decl., Ex. A, at p. 2.)  Because the parties agreed that PAGA actions cannot be arbitrated, Defendant may not compel arbitration here.

Defendant suggests the Court may ignore this language because PAGA claims were not arbitrable at the time the parties entered into the arbitration agreement.  Under the new rule of Viking River Cruises, Defendant argues, “a Plaintiff may agree to arbitrate and waive claims under PAGA.”  (Pet. at p. 6.)  But whether an employee may agree to arbitrate and waive PAGA claims in general says nothing about whether the agreement here so provides.  As set forth above, the arbitration agreement expressly excludes PAGA claims from arbitration and requires they be brought in a court of law. 

In its Reply, Defendant argues that the exclusion of PAGA claims in the arbitration agreement applies only to “representative” claims, i.e., claims brought on behalf of other employees. Defendant adds that the Viking River Cruises Court’s recognition of “individual” PAGA claims, i.e., Plaintiff’s personal PAGA claims, means that those claims are not truly “representative” and, therefore, are not subject to the exclusion.

While it is conceivable that an arbitration agreement could be drafted to make this distinction, that is not the case here. Considering the exclusion in context, the term “representative” is properly read as “representative of the state of California.”  Put another way, the PAGA exclusion quoted above applies to any such action “brought on behalf of the state.” Because nothing in Viking River Cruises suggests that an individual PAGA claim is not brought on behalf of the State of California, Defendant’s argument is without merit.