Abstract

The Supreme Court decided five primary labor and employment law cases in 2024—two discrimination cases, two arbitration cases, and one labor law case. This article also discusses a sixth case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, because it will undoubtedly affect labor and employment law despite the facts and underlying issue having nothing to do with the workplace.

I was initially underwhelmed with this year’s cases. None of them addresses any major substantive labor and employment law issue. However, upon further consideration, the cases are noteworthy for three reasons. First, three of them are pro-plaintiff with outcomes that benefit workers—Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, and Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St., LLC. This outcome is (perhaps) quite surprising given the makeup of the Supreme Court. Yet this result might not be that surprising because textualism arguments carried the day in all three of these cases, and this Court generally favors textualism. Second, these opinions resulted in unexpected unanimity. I think this fact is related to the fact just mentioned. In other words, because the text of the relevant statutes so clearly dictated the result, there was not much reason for dissent. Finally, this past term was also significant because the Court made the monumental (and in my mind, ill-advised) decision to overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which had required courts to give deference to reasonable agency interpretations of statutes that they enforced. Even though this was not a labor and employment case, as I discuss below, it will undoubtedly reverberate throughout the labor and employment law field.

This article proceeds in four additional parts. Part II discusses the two discrimination cases—Murray v. UBS Securities and Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, both of which resulted in pro-plaintiff outcomes. Part III discusses the two arbitration cases—Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St., LLC and Smith v. Spizzirri. Part IV addresses the one labor law case, Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, which was the only labor and employment law case that was undoubtedly favorable to employers, although how favorable is open to debate. Part V addresses the most significant case this past term that has both nothing and everything to do with labor and employment law, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Although this article can only scratch the surface of the far-reaching implications of this decision, I do briefly address the anticipated consequences of this decision for the major labor and employment law federal agencies. Finally, Part VI briefly concludes.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2025

Publication Information

39 ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 1-39 (2025)

Comments

©2025. First published in ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2025, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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