There is little doubt, statistically, that the Supreme Court presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has been more sympathetic to corporate interests than any court since World War II. A comprehensive study of more than 1,750 decisions from 1946 to 2011, published recently in the Minnesota Law Review, found that the Roberts court has repeatedly shielded business from lawsuits involving class actions, workplace disputes and consumer complaints. (The Times’s Adam Liptak has reported about this and related studies.)
There are few better (and more outrageous) examples of this pro-business bias than Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk. The plaintiff, Laura Symczyk, a registered nurse at a Genesis nursing home in Philadelphia, alleged that the company docked her and others 30 minutes per shift for meal breaks, even when they worked through the shift.
She sought damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Genesis offered her $7,500 for unpaid wages and other costs, take-it-or-leave-it within 10 days. She did not reply to the offer. Instead she proceeded with a lawsuit, for herself and others similarly situated in a collective action.
A Federal District Court ruled for Genesis, saying the company’s offer ended her claims. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, while agreeing that the offer satisfied her individual claim, said her collective action could go forward. The Supreme Court held otherwise. Writing for a 5-to-4 majority, Justice Clarence Thomas declared, in so many words, that when the individual claim for workplace violations was dismissed, the collective action went out the window, too. The dispute was basically about money, he said; Genesis’ reasonable offer had made Ms. Symczyk’s claim moot and, in doing so, made the whole case go away.
Justice Elena Kagan’s critique of Justice Thomas’s opinion is remarkable for its withering scorn. The district court’s decision (and Justice Thomas’s) served only to hustle Ms. Symczyk out of the courthouse and sweep the broader workplace problem under the rug. But, Justice Kagan argued, since Ms. Symczyk never accepted the offer and never got any money, both her individual claim and the collective claim attached to it continued. The mootness issue, she suggested, was largely a figment of Justice Thomas’s imagination.
“The majority’s decision is fit for nothing,” she said. “Aside from getting this case wrong, it serves only to address a make-believe problem.”
Justice Kagan concludes that only the plaintiff here can decide when she wants to end her lawsuit, not the corporation she is battling. For Justice Thomas to say otherwise twists common sense and legal principle into knots to give corporations the upper hand over everyone else.