Supreme Court to Decide if Wonder Bread Truck Drivers Are Exempt From Arbitration

The Supreme Court is to determine whether truck drivers for the company that makes Wonder Bread are considered transportation workers exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).

The FAA, enacted in 1925, contains a provision the justices wrestled with during oral arguments on Feb. 20. The provision shields from compulsory arbitration all “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”

The highly technical case comes after the Supreme Court held in Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon (2022) that cargo loaders for airplanes are a “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” and are therefore allowed to opt out of arbitration. The occasional border crossing isn’t enough to make interstate transportation a central component of an employee’s job, the court ruled at the time.

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