Snoozefest alert!

I agree, SCOTUS probably needs to clarify most of these nerdy fucking cases they take, but god damn, some of them are really over very trivial issues.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, most of their work is due to idiots in congress writing poorly-worded law, so they’re forced to fix it for them.

Nonetheless, let’s get into this shit.

Latrice Saxon, the respondent, worked for Southwest Airlines as a ramp-agent supervisor. Basically, she was in charge of, and sometimes assisted, all the mules that load cargo onto and off of planes.

Most of these employees that work the airline ramps are unionized. But, if you know anything about unions, you know that usually, only the workers can be in the union—management are typically not welcome.

You also likely know that workers are often hourly, and managers often salaried.

Latrice Saxon, was apparently often asked to work more than 40 hours a week, and didn’t fucking appreciate that she was not paid overtime for it, since she was a supervisor. Since she’s not part of the union, she doesn’t really get to fight it much.

In her employment agreement, she’s agreed to arbitration, but apparently, instead of looking to negotiate through arbitration, she instead wants to argue Southwest is breaking the law like Judas Priest, by not paying OT. So off to court she went.

That said, there’s the old Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). It exempts certain people from arbitration—specifically “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”

It’s assume Congress wanted to protect these workers specifically from being forced to arbitrate, as they’re so essential to the health of the nation’s commerce.

So whether the can sue in court or not, depends on whether SCOTUS thinks that these drones working the airline ramps are “engage in foreign or interstate commerce.”

Southwest, thinking Saxon is a fucking idiot, argue that because the ramp agents and supervisors keep their ass at one airport all day. Nothing international or foreign about that shit. She never leaves Chicago. A district court, the original to hear this case, agreed with them.

We’re going to get even nerdier, folks. Strap in.

In a previous ruling, SCOTUS set precedent that if a group of items is listed, but then the group ends with a much more broad category of items related to the initial items, the broad item should be thought of as related to the previous items.

I know, what the fuck does that even mean?

Let’s say we talk about “spoons, forks, and other silverware.”

SCOTUS is saying, that clearly “other silverware” is talking about eating utensils in this case, as it’s related to forks and spoons. It is NOT to be construed as any fucking thing made of silver. Capiche?

So, about “seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” If the precedent above holds, then basically, people engaged in foreign commerce are people who travel with the cargo or people, just as seamen and railroad employees might, not people who can claim any dubious connection to interstate commerce.

Saxon however, argues that because the FAA itself says “agreements relating to wharfage … or any other matters in foreign commerce” (Wharfage is fee ports charge for cargo to use their wharves), she argues that it’s clearly linking cargo mules to foreign commerce. Case closed. Microphone dropped.

The seventh circuit agreed with Saxon.

So that means, we have a conflict that is then appealed to the highest court in the land. So on to SCOTUS and oral arguments we go…

Counsel Shay Dvoretzky opened for Southwest.

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Section 1 of the FAA exempts only classes of workers that work on an instrumentality of foreign or interstate commerce, like a plane, ship, or train, as it moves goods or people across borders. That rule follows from Circuit City and Section 1’s text and structure.

Circuit City held that the exemption reaches only classes of workers engaged in foreign or interstate transportation.

As then Judge Barrett held in Wallace, that means an exempted class of workers must perform work analogous to that of seamen and railroad employees. Seamen and railroad employees’ key characteristic was working on ships and trains. We know that because “seamen” was a term of art. It meant workers who predominantly worked on a vessel.

Vessels, by definition, transported or were capable of transporting goods or people over water.

And the paradigmatic seamen, as the Court noted in Chandris, sailed long voyages. That made seamen as a class actively engaged in foreign or interstate transportation. Critically, seamen did not include land-based maritime employees.

By specifying seamen, Congress excluded stevedores, who are land-based cargo loaders. Now Saxon says the exemption covers the entire airline industry.

But Section 1 exempts classes of workers, not industries, engaged in foreign or interstate transportation. It says “seamen,” not maritime employees.

It repeats “foreign or interstate,” emphasizing border crossing.

And placed among these other words, “railroad employees” similarly means workers who perform their duties on the train. Saxon is not exempt from the FAA. Cargo loaders don’t work on planes, just as stevedores didn’t work on ships.

They load cargo before other classes of workers, like seamen and pilots, do the foreign or interstate transportation.

They may facilitate transportation, but that’s not the test Circuit City requires. I’m happy to take the Court’s questions.

Justice Roberts was like, “Are you saying, that for Saxon to win, she must be crossing some border during the course of the duty she’s performing that day?

Dvoretzky was like, “No, bro. We’re only saying, that ramp agent supervisors in general, should be crossing borders commonly as part of their job. They don’t become exempt only in the work that happens to cross borders in that moment.”

Justice Neil “Golden Voice” Gorsuch was rather skeptical of Southwest’s narrow view of interstate or foreign workers. He was like, “Explain to me, why the fuck people loading and unloading a plane, are somehow specifically not engaged in foreign commerce when the people and cargo they’re fucking loading are moving from one state and country to another? Seems fucking fishy, man.”

All the justices seemed to take issue with his argument that somehow seamen doesn’t include stevedores (people who load ships), and that railroad workers doesn’t include cargo loaders. Just because they weren’t named, doesn’t mean we get to just assume that they weren’t considered part of the larger group. So counsel Dvoretzky seemed to have an uphill battle, and it didn’t look like he was winning it.

For Saxon, counsel Jennifer Bennett opened with:

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: If Congress wanted to exempt from the FAA just those workers aboard an instrumentality of commerce crossing state lines, it easily could have said so. Instead, it excluded the employment contracts of seamen, railroad employees, and any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce. This Court made clear in New Prime that we interpret this exemption just as we would any other statute, by the meaning of its words at the time it was passed.

Those words exempt airline employees who load and unload cargo. Southwest can’t dispute that by 1925 it was blackletter law that the transportation of goods in commerce begins when they’re given to a carrier and it only ends when they’re received at their final destination. Indeed, this Court had repeatedly held that loading and unloading cargo specifically is part of that transportation, not ancillary to transportation or connected to transportation, but it is itself transportation, that it is itself commerce. And just the year before the FAA was passed, as Justice Kavanaugh pointed out, this Court held that it was too plain to require discussion that a worker who unloaded a train was a railroad employee and that that railroad employee was engaged in interstate commerce. Yet Southwest contends that workers who load and unload airplanes are not part of any class of workers engaged in commerce for purposes of the FAA. There’s no support for this contention in the text of the statute.

Southwest can’t point to even a single example from any time period in which the phrase “engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” has ever been given the meaning it proposes. So, instead, Southwest invokes the statute’s purpose.

The FAA favors arbitration, Southwest says, so the exemption must be given as narrow a reading as possible regardless of what the text actually means. But this Court rejected that very argument in New Prime.

And even if we were to privilege purpose over text, on Southwest’s interpretation, the exemption would do exactly what Circuit City held it was designed to avoid, unsettle developing and existing dispute resolution regimes at the time. I welcome this Court’s questions.

Justice Roberts, looking for that line to draw started to ask if ticket takers for the airlines are exempt, or what about general counsel for the airline?

Counsel Bennett was hesitant to start naming people who are and aren’t exempt. But her argument was that if they’re directly involved with the cargo or people moving from state to state or country to country, they’re covered. Some asshole lawyer helps the company, but doesn’t really help move goods or people.

She also took issue with the test the opposition put forward, that the test is whether or not people are on the plane.

She was like, “Fucking loadmasters go on the plane and make sure the planes cargo are evenly distributed throughout the plane, so it fucking flies straight. Some of these people never get on the plane, some board it, some fly with it. So are supposed to divide up employees like this based on their stupid test? That would be very discriminating.

She proposed instead that:

Airline employees are those who do the work of the airline. They do the customary work directly contributory to the airline’s transportation function

She then suggested a narrower test that would be:

People who handle goods while they’re in commerce.

Justice Alito, looking to understand if she’s broadening the definition outside the airlines and shipping companies asked who else would fall under her new test?

She responded that this means people in trucking and bussing would be exempt as well, because they would fall under her test.

Justice Roberts, ever skeptical of her test, was like “What about those fuckheads at Amazon. They’re clearly involved in interstate commerce, and touching the goods for purposes of transportation. So are they exempt?” But as usual, it’s justice Roberts, so he said it very politely.

She somewhat agreed that people like Amazon, FedEx, UPS, et al., would be covered if they’re the group of people are putting things on their planes, ships, trucks, etc., and sending them out of state or out of the country.

In a unanimous decision, where justice Barrett recused herself as she’d ruled on a related case previously, SCOTUS sided with Saxon. They noted that the wharfage exemption mentioned earlier proves congress intended to include cargo workers and such. So therefore, the test is to be that if the workers are engage in loading and unloading cargo, and if so, is that cargo generally interstate or international. If so, then that worker is exempt from the FAA and doesn’t have to go through arbitration.

This doesn’t mean Saxon really wins anything. It’s still up to lower courts to decide if she’s owed overtime. But it at least allows her to bypass arbitration, which she feels is more likely to side with Southwest Airlines for whatever reason.