Alaska Employment Law

The 9th Cricuit has rejected a public policy challenge to an arbitration award that reinstated employees who received “no match” letters from the Social Security Administration.  The panel affirmed an arbitration award that found that the employer had not knowingly employed undocumented workers. 

The court summarized the “public policy” defense to an arbitration award as follows: 

“To vacate an arbitration award on public policy grounds, we must (1) find that an explicit, well defined and dominant policy exists here and (2) that the policy is one that specifically militates against the relief ordered by the arbitrator.” . . . In evaluating a public policy argument, we “must focus on the award itself, not the behavior or conduct of the party in question.” . . .  We have stressed that “courts should be reluctant to vacate arbitral awards on public policy grounds,” because “[t]he finality of arbitral awards must be preserved if arbitration is to remain a desirable alternative to courtroom litigation.” . . .  Moreover, before the award will be vacated as against public policy, the policy violation must be “clearly shown.”  . . .  Importantly, the public policy inquiry proceeds by taking the facts as found by the arbitrator. “The parties did not bargain for the facts to be found by a court, but by an arbitrator chosen by them . . . [.] Nor does the fact that it is inquiring into a possible violation of public policy excuse a court for doing the arbitrator’s task.”  . . .  Accordingly, in evaluating whether the arbitrator’s award violated public policy here, we will not revisit the arbitrator’s factual findings, in particular the finding that there was no “convincing information” that any of the terminated workers were undocumented.

Aramark Facility Serv. v. SEIU, 2008 WL _______ (9th Cir. June 16, 2008)(citations omitted)