Citations
- 255 F. Supp. 3d 1291
Full opinion text
ORDER
Amy Totenberg, United States District Judge
Defendant’s Motion to Compel Arbitration of Opt-Ins’ Claims [Doc. 57] is before the Court. Specifically, Defendant Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”) seeks to compel the arbitration of claims for nine individuals who consented to join this Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) case on April 15, 2016. Fannie Mae does not seek anew to compel arbitration of the FLSA claims brought by the two named Plaintiffs, Teri Prowant and Tamara Mitchell-Johnson, or the one individual who opted in earlier, Clifton Holland.
This is not the first time Fannie Mae has raised the issue of arbitrability and, in doing so, halted all proceedings on the Plaintiff employees’ FLSA claims. The Court’s prior order (Doc. 51) lays out the background facts in more detail, but here they are in a nutshell:
In May 2014, the two named Plaintiffs brought them FLSA claims against Fannie Mae in a JAMS arbitration forum on behalf of themselves and other “similarly situated” employees. They claimed Fannie Mae had violated the FLSA’s overtime provisions. The arbitrator adjudicated the ease for several months, during which time Fannie Mae filed an answer, the parties held a preliminary scheduling conference, and the parties briefed the issue of whether Fannie Mae’s dispute resolution policy (“DRP”) allowed for class claims. But on November 25, 2014, after the arbitrator had set a hearing to address the class claims issue, Fannie Mae suddenly halted the arbitration by filing the current case. Fannie Mae sought a declaratory judgment that its DRP did not allow Plaintiffs to arbitrate their claims as a class and that only this Court (not an arbitrator) could decide whether the DRP allowed class arbitration. Fannie Mae also asked for an injunction to stop the underlying arbitration. Up to this point, Fannie Mae had never raised the argument that the arbitrator could not decide the issue of class arbitrability.
The Court stayed the underlying JAMs proceedings while it resolved the class arbitration issue before it. Only one individual,- Clifton Holland, had filed a written consent to join the underlying arbitration before Fannie Mae filed the current action. The Court-ordered stay meant that no other individuals could opt into the underlying arbitration, and it was unclear whether Plaintiffs’ FLSA claims would eventually proceed in the JAMS arbitration forum or in federal court. Right around this time, the parties also entered into a stipulation after Plaintiffs raised the concern that the statute of limitations would meanwhile run