Originally from Employment Arbitration - 2nd Edition

The U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Wright

Thomas E. Carbonneau

(i) The Ruling in Wright

On November 16, 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its ruling in Wright v. Universal Maritime Service Corp. In its opinion, delivered by Justice Scalia for a unanimous bench, the Court reversed a Fourth Circuit ruling that a worker must first bring his ADA claim to collective bargaining arbitration before filing a lawsuit to vindicate his statutory rights.

In Wright, pursuant to its decision in Austin v. Owens-Brockway Glass Container, the Fourth Circuit had held that CBA provisions “to arbitrate employment disputes are binding upon individual employees even when the dispute involves a federal cause of action.” Accordingly, “a failure to process a claim under the [labor] agreement precludes a court from exercising jurisdiction over the merits of the claim.”

The Court saw Wright’s claim as purely statutory, not contractual. The “presumption of arbitrability” did not apply because that presumption only involved claims that arose under the labor agreement. Moreover, a collective bargaining agreement’s requirement to arbitrate statutory claims “must be particularly clear.” The CBA’s arbitration clause in this case was very general, providing for arbitration of “matters under dispute,” and there was no explicit incorporation into the agreement of statutory antidiscrimination protections. The Court’s conclusion was that the collective agreement “does not contain a clear and unmistakable waiver of the covered employee’s right to a judicial forum for federal claims of employment discrimination.”