18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

526 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition and thus their claims were all subject to the same common questions and facts. The Court also reasoned that Plaintiffs’ claims were similar if not identical to the proposed class members’ claims, and thus were typical to those of the proposed class members. Id. at *17-18. The Court was also persuaded that Plaintiff and her counsel were adequate to protect the interests of the proposed class members and met the adequacy requirement. As to the Rule 23(b) requirements, the Court concluded that the common issues of fact and law did not require individual proof, but rather were subject to proof by common evidence as to Defendant’s operation of its point of sale system such that Plaintiffs met the predominance requirement. Finally, the Court concluded that Plaintiffs met the superiority requirement because there was no pending litigation against Defendants, the concentration of claims in a single action was more than likely to be the only vehicle by which private individuals would endeavor to enforce their rights under the UTPCPA, and there was nothing anything unusual or difficult about the management of Plaintiffs’ proposed class action. For these reasons, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. Williams, et al. v. Big Picture Loans, LLC, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130251 (E.D. Va. July 12, 2021). Plaintiffs filed several actions alleging that Defendants, several payday loan lenders and individual Defendant Matt Martorello, engaged in a "Rent-a-Tribe" scheme in which they partnered with Native American tribes "in an effort to cloak the payday lenders in the sovereign immunity of Native American tribes, and, in so doing, to preclude enforcement of the interest rate caps in state usury laws." Id . at *5. Plaintiffs moved for class certification. Defendant Martorello filed an opposition to Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification on the grounds that class members had waived their right to participate in a class action against him. Plaintiffs received high-interest small-dollar loans from either Red Rock or Big Picture, and the payments on the loan contracts made their way to Martorello. Martorello argued that the loan documents’ "Waiver of Jury Trial" provision applied to him. The Court rejected Martorello’s argument. It reasoned that even if the agreements could somehow could be construed to apply to Martorello, the waiver was unenforceable. The Court ruled that when viewing the context of the Tribal Financial Services Regulatory Authority Code (the "Code") and the loan agreement as a whole, the "Waiver of Jury Trial" provision clearly amounted to a substantive waiver of federally protected rights. Id . The Court held that the waiver effectively prevented borrowers from vindicating any federal statutory claim. For these reasons, the Court found that the waiver did not apply to Martorello, and even if it did, the waiver was unenforceable. (xxix) COVID-19 Class Actions Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85, et al. v. Port Authority Of Allegheny County , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9276 (W.D. Penn. Jan. 19, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group comprised of individual transit workers and their labor union, filed a class action alleging that Defendant violated Plaintiffs’ free speech and equal protection rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Id. at *7. Specifically, Defendant required its employees to wear facemasks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and several employees wore masks that displayed the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” Id. After an employee complained about how Defendant would feel if he wore a “White Lives Matter” mask in response, Defendant imposed a policy restricting its employees from wearing masks containing “political and social-protest” messages. Id . Several Plaintiffs were disciplined or threatened with discipline for continuing to wear “Black Lives Matter” masks, and shortly thereafter, Defendant amended its policy to allow only certain facemasks – such as plain colored/clear masks and those portraying Defendant’s logo or the Union’s logo – to be worn at work. Plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction barring Defendant from enforcing its mask policy, and the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion. As to the merits of Plaintiffs’ case, the Court concluded that Defendant’s original policy banning masks with political or social- protest messages violated the First Amendment. The Court opined that Defendant needed to rebut this conclusion with “a sufficiently weighty showing of likely disruption,” and to that end, Defendant averred that political and social-protest language was potentially disruptive in the workplace. Id. at *39. To support its argument, Defendant pointed to social media messages and text messages from Union members debating whether employees should be able to wear “Black Lives Matter” masks at work. The Court rejected this argument. It held that Defendant offered no compelling evidence of any actual disruptions caused by employees wearing politically-motivated masks. The Court further noted that it would not “legitimize the erroneous, if increasingly endemic, view that mere exposure to differences of opinion is a harm to be feared or avoided.” Id. at *48. Defendant alternatively contended that it had a strong interest in enforcing a “pristine” uniform, but the Court reasoned that such a legitimate interest has only been recognized in cases involving law enforcement,