Supreme Court Decides Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St., LLC

On April 12, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bissonnette et al. v. LePage Bakeries Park St., LLC, et al., No. 23-51. The Court held that a transportation worker need not work in the transportation industry to be exempt from coverage under § 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).

Neal Bissonnette and Tyler Wojnarowski (“Petitioners”) worked as distributors for Flowers Foods, Inc., a multibillion-dollar producer and marketer of baked goods. To purchase the rights to their territories, Petitioners signed Distributor Agreements with Flowers. Those contracts incorporated separate Arbitration Agreements that required any legal claim against Flowers to be arbitrated under the FAA. Petitioners brought a putative class action claiming that Flowers had underpaid them in violation of state and federal law. 

In the parties’ ensuing dispute in the District of Connecticut, Flowers moved to compel arbitration. Petitioners countered that their work as distributors was covered by § 1 of the FAA, which exempts “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” from the FAA. The District Court disagreed with Petitioners’ interpretation of the residual clause of § 1, and the Second Circuit affirmed, holding that Petitioners could not avoid arbitration because they were not workers in the “transportation industry.”

The Supreme Court vacated and remanded, holding that a transportation worker need not work in the transportation industry to fall within the exemption from the FAA provided in the residual clause of § 1 of the Act. The Court rejected the “transportation-industry requirement” that the Second Circuit fashioned, which the Court said had no support in the text of § 1 or Supreme Court precedent. The Court explained that § 1 focuses on the performance of work rather than the industry of the employer. 

Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.