Reversing the district court’s judgment in a putative class action brought by former employees of a travel-nursing agency against the agency for purported wage-related violations, the panel held that the application of non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel to preclude the enforcement of arbitration agreements was not compatible with the Federal Arbitration Act.

The agency entered into arbitration agreements with each of its employees, and the agreements contained a clause requiring an arbitrator (not a court) to determine the validity of the arbitration agreement. The district court sent four cases to separate arbitrations. Two arbitrators found the agreements valid, and the other two arbitrators found the agreements invalid. Applying the doctrine of non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel, the district court picked the two arbitral awards invalidating the agreements to preclude the arbitration of disputes with respect to 255 other employees who had separate arbitration agreements with the agency.

The panel held that the doctrine of non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel cannot be invoked to avoid enforcement of an arbitration agreement. Nowhere in the FAA did Congress contemplate that a non-mutual preclusion doctrine could be deployed to frustrate an arbitration that the parties had agreed to undertake in resolving their disputes. The application of non-mutual offensive issue preclusion would also violate the principle of consent that the FAA incorporates. In addition, the application of the doctrine to deny enforcement of an arbitration agreement is incorrect because the district court’s ruling effectively transformed individualized arbitral proceedings into something akin to a bellwether class action to which the parties never agreed.

Accordingly, the panel reversed the district court’s judgment and remanded for further proceedings.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/04/01/25-1528.pdf