Epic Systems v. Lewis: What Happens When Clarity Wins and Workers Lose

There are moments when the law follows the letter so closely that it misses what is written between the lines. Epic Systems v. Lewis was one of those moments. At its heart, the case asked a difficult question: can an employer ask workers to sign away the right to join together in legal claims, and then treat that waiver as binding? The answer, according to the Supreme Court, was yes.

The case involved employees who had signed arbitration agreements requiring that any disputes be resolved individually. These agreements did not allow class or collective actions. The employees argued that this violated the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the right to act together for mutual benefit. The employer pointed to the Federal Arbitration Act, which says courts must respect arbitration clauses as they are written.

The two laws seemed to pull in different directions. But the Court did not view them as conflicting. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said there was no clear reason to believe Congress wanted the labor law to override the arbitration law. Since the agreements were plainly worded and explicitly rejected collective procedures, the Court decided they must be enforced.

That decision rested on a method of interpretation that gives primary weight to the text. If the words are clear, the outcome follows. The Court looked for signs that Congress intended to make an exception, and found none. It treated the absence of ambiguity as a sign that the contracts were valid.

But that conclusion raised a deeper problem. Just because an agreement is easy to read does not mean it is fair. The contracts in question were not negotiated between equals. They were standard forms presented by the employer, and employees had no real choice but to accept them. What was described as consent was, in many cases, just compliance.

Justice Ginsburg, writing in dissent, warned that the ruling would shut down a major path for workers to defend their rights. She pointed out that individual claims are often too small to pursue alone. Only by joining together do workers have the leverage to challenge unfair practices. Without that option, many violations go unaddressed.

This case did not involve tricky legal loopholes or complicated clauses. The agreements were clear. But they were also powerful tools, used to limit collective action in a way that shifted legal risk entirely onto the individual. The Court’s narrow focus on textual clarity meant it never had to ask whether this shift undermined broader principles of access and equality.

The decision also revealed something about the limits of judicial review. Courts are usually equipped to step in when contracts are unclear, deceptive, or practically inaccessible. But when agreements are clean and direct, even if they carry serious consequences, courts often step back. They defer to the words on the page, and leave questions of fairness to lawmakers.

What Epic Systems exposed is a gap between legal form and social reality. It reminded us that clarity alone is not a safeguard. A contract can be plain, and still unbalanced. In a system that depends on private ordering, power shapes outcomes as much as language does.

This is not just a story about arbitration. It is a story about what happens when precision in drafting becomes more important than fairness in process. And it is a call to look more closely, not just at how contracts are written, but at who is writing them, and under what conditions.