The plaintiff bar successfully prosecuted class certification motions at the highest rates ever last year, but employers benefited by the U.S. Supreme Court’s arguably more pro-business rulings, as well from the Trump Administration’s less aggressive government enforcement litigation agenda, says a law firm report.

Of the 271 wage and hour certification decisions last year, plaintiffs won 199 of 245, or about 81%, and lost 15 of 26 decertification rulings, about 58%, according to the 16th Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report issued Tuesday by Chicago-based law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP.

In comparison, there were 273 wage & hour certification decisions in 2018, where plaintiffs won 196 of 248 conditional certification rulings, about 79%, and lost 13 of 25 decertification rulings, about 52%. 

“In sum, employers lost more first stage conditional certification motions in 2019, while bettering their odds – an increase of nearly 6% – of fracturing cases with successful certification motions in 2019,” said the report.

The report said class action certification “has been shaped and influenced to large degree” by recent Supreme Court rulings, with the court issuing several decisions last year in complex employment litigation and class action issues “that were arguably more pro-business than decisions in past terms.” 

These include the high court’s April 2019 ruling in Lamps Plus Inc. et al. v. Frank Varela, in which the court held that companies need not submit to class action arbitration in cases where their workers’ arbitration agreements do not explicitly allow it.

In addition, a May 2018 ruling in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, in which the Supreme Court upheld the legality of class action waivers in mandatory arbitration agreements, has had a “profound impact” on the workplace class action litigation’s prosecution and defense, according to the report.

The report said also that while government enforcement filings and settlements in 2019 “did not reflect a head-snapping pivot” from the Obama administration’s ideological pro-worker outlook to a “pro-business, less regulation litigation viewpoint of the Trump Administration,” there was a downward trend in terms of a less aggressive agenda in government enforcement litigation. 

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for instance, brought 144 lawsuits in 2019 compared with 199 in 2018, although “the numbers still outpaced the 896 lawsuits filed in 2016, the last year of the Obama Administration,” said the report.

Among other trends, the monetary value of the overall aggregate workplace class action settlement increased slightly in 2019 to $1.34 billion in 2019, compared with $1.32 billion 2018, “but as compared to the last several years, it was one of the lowest marks for settlements after those values plummeted to their lowest levels ever in 2018,” said the report.

Meanwhile, “as it continues to gain momentum on a worldwide basis, the #MeToo movement is fueling employment litigation issues in general and workplace class action in particular,” said the report.

Experts said in May that employment practices liability claims stemming from the #MeToo movement continue to increase and had not yet reached their peak, experts say.