On January 19, 2016 NELA joined the National Employment Law Project, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center, and Towards Justice in filing an amicus brief in support of the Plaintiff-Appellees in Mohamed/Gillette v. Uber.
Our amicus brief makes three key arguments in support of the drivers. First, the brief points out that the provisions of the forced arbitration clauses at issue related to the sharing of fees and costs would make arbitration prohibitively expensive for the drivers, thus preventing them from effectively vindicating their rights under federal law. Second, the brief argues that the forced arbitration provisions are both procedurally and substantively unconscionable under California law, and cannot be saved through the inclusion of an opt-out mechanism that few drivers would understand and most would be unlikely to utilize. Third, the brief identifies the serious problems that would arise if the court adopted the defendants’ proposed rule regarding the severability of unlawful terms in arbitration agreements. Under such a rule, employers would have little incentive to refrain from including unconscionable terms in arbitration agreements, knowing that courts would merely sever the offending terms and enforce the arbitration agreement anyway.
The amicus brief was drafted by David Seligman of Towards Justice in Denver, CO.