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Scoggins v. Menards

Scoggins v. Menards

What’s at Stake

When a new law is enacted, it must also be interpreted and applied correctly by courts.  That’s why the first legal cases regarding a new law can be extremely important. This case is about ensuring a 2022 law protecting access to justice is correctly applied and interpreted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

In 2022, President Biden signed the Ending Forced Arbitration in Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFASASHA). EFASASHA ensures that workers who have been sexually assaulted or harassed can have their cases heard in court. Before EFASASHA, employers could sweep serious claims of sexual assault or harassment under the rug by forcing their employees to take those claims to arbitration, a private forum without the protections of the legal system that is often biased against workers.

Background

Michelle Scoggins is an employee who should be protected by EFASASHA. Ms. Scoggins was employed as a forklift driver at Menards, a big box store in Ohio. After she was promoted to supervisor, she endured intimidation and harassment from Bill Nelson, the Assistant Plant manager. According to Ms. Scoggins’s complaint, he disparaged her for being a woman, including slamming a door in her face and asking if he should have held it open because she was a woman. In April 2023, Ms. Scoggins was terminated after she attempted to take medical leave due to side effects from depression medication.

After her termination, Ms. Scoggins sued Menards and Nelson, alleging sex discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation under Ohio law, disability discrimination, and violations of the Family Medical Leave Act. Pointing to an agreement she signed when she began working at Menards, the defendants moved to compel Ms. Scoggins’s case into arbitration. Though she conceded that she had agreed to arbitrate her claims with Menards, Ms. Scoggins opposed the motion because Nelson was not a signatory to that agreement, so she had never agreed to arbitrate her claims against him.

The district court denied the motion to compel arbitration for both Menards and Nelson, holding that EFASASHA applied to invalidate the arbitration agreement. The district court held that her case was within the Act’s coverage because either her sexual harassment claim accrued or her dispute with Menards arose after the Act’s March 2022 effective date. The court also agreed with the vast majority of other district courts, which have held that when a case includes a sexual harassment claim in addition to other types of claims, EFASASHA’s protections apply to the entire case, not just the sexual harassment claim. That means Ms. Scoggins’s case should not be heard in multiple venues (court for sexual harassment, arbitration for all others); the entire case should proceed in court.

Core Legal Issues

The defendants appealed the district court’s denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Their three main arguments against the lower court’s decision are being raised in the Sixth Circuit for the first time. First, they argued that since Ms. Scoggins did not raise EFASASHA herself when she opposed their motion to compel, she did not affirmatively “elect” to invalidate the arbitration agreement within the meaning of EFASASHA. Second, they argued that EFASASHA does not cover the case because Ms. Scoggins’s claims were based on conduct that occurred before the Act’s effective date. Finally, they argued that the original arbitration agreement can only be invalidated for the sexual harassment claims, so only those claims should proceed in court.

We filed an amicus brief responding to the defendant’s’ three arguments with our partners at the National Women’s Law Center, the National Employment Lawyers Association, and the American Association for Justice. First, we argued that the best reading of EFASASHA is that a plaintiff “elects” to invalidate an arbitration agreement when she pursues her claims in court rather than arbitration, and no further specific words or actions are required to invoke EFASASHA. Second, we argued that because it can be inferred from the complaint that some of the harassment occurred after the Act’s effective date, Ms. Scoggins’s claim accrued after the Act went into effect, and that, in any event, the dispute between Ms. Scoggins and the defendants arose only after she was terminated and filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission in April 2023, well after the Act was enacted. Finally, we argued that the statute’s plain language and legislative history show that EFASASHA invalidates the arbitration agreement for the entire case, not just the sexual harassment claims.



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