14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett

14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 1, 2008 Decided April 1, 2009
Full case name	14 Penn Plaza LLC, et al., Petitioners v. Steven Pyett, et al.
Docket no.	07-581
Citations	556 U.S. 247 (more) 129 S. Ct. 1456; 173 L. Ed. 2d 398
Argument	Oral argument
Opinion announcement	Opinion announcement
Case history
Prior	Motion to dismiss or compel arbitration denied, Pyett v. Pa. Bldg. Co., 04-cv-7536 (NRB) (S.D.N.Y. June 1, 2006); reversed, 498 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 2007); cert. granted, 552 U.S. 1178 (2008).
Holding
A provision in a collective-bargaining agreement that clearly and unmistakably requires union members to arbitrate ADEA claims is enforceable as a matter of federal law. This CBA clearly and unmistakably requires respondents to arbitrate the age discrimination claims at issue in this appeal. United States District Court for the Southern District of New York reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Majority	Thomas, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Alito
Dissent	Souter, joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent	Stevens
Laws applied
Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. § 621 National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 159(a)

14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U.S. 247 (2009), is a United States labor law case decided by the United States Supreme Court on the rights of unionized workers to sue their employer for age discrimination. In this 2009 decision, the Court decided that whenever a union contract "clearly and unmistakably" requires that all age discrimination claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) be decided through arbitration, then employees subject to that contract cannot have those claims heard in court.^[1]

Pyett's lawyers, in addition to arguing that a union could not legally bargain away an employee's right to pursue an ADEA claim in court, also argued that "the facts… [show that the union] Local32BJ… has not done so in this case."^[2] However, because these arguments had not been raised in the lower courts, the Supreme Court chose not to consider them and decided that the Collective Bargaining Agreement in this case did mandate that the employees' ADEA claims had to be resolved through arbitration.^[3]

Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in 14 Penn Plaza v. Pyett, employees who were covered under union contracts, often referred to as bargaining unit members, had been able to raise any claims of civil rights violations by their employer in court. This had been the case regardless of the language which was stated in their union contract, a document often referred to as a collective bargaining agreement, or CBA.