Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

The Seventh Circuit recently held that district courts should not send court-authorized notice of pending FLSA collective actions to employees who are party to a mandatory arbitration agreement.

In Bigger v. Facebook, Inc., the plaintiff-employee brought an FLSA collective action, alleging that she and a group of “similarly situated” employees were misclassified as exempt employees.  When the plaintiff-employee moved to conditionally certify the FLSA collective action and to send court-authorized notice of the action, the defendant-employer argued that notice was improper and inefficient because most putative members were bound by mandatory arbitration agreements that prohibited their participation in the case.  Despite being presented with a copy of the arbitration agreement, the district court granted conditional certification and ordered the parties to issue notice to all putative collective members, including those that had signed arbitration agreements.  The Seventh Circuit granted an interlocutory appeal.