NLRA (National Labor Relations Act)

The federal statute protecting employees' rights to organize, engage in collective bargaining, and participate in concerted activities for mutual aid or protection. The NLRA is increasingly invoked as a defense against arbitration class action waivers, with some plaintiffs arguing that waivers interfere with the right to engage in concerted activity — an argument ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court in Epic Systems but that continues to generate circuit-level litigation. Funders in the employment space monitor NLRA developments because shifts in how waivers are enforced directly affect whether class-wide funding structures remain viable.

Funders in the employment space monitor NLRA-based challenges to arbitration waivers as a legal-landscape risk rather than a case-specific one, since a shift in how courts treat concerted-activity arguments could reopen class-wide funding structures currently foreclosed by Epic Systems. This doctrine rarely drives an individual underwriting decision today, but funders track circuit-level developments here because a favorable shift would expand the addressable market for employment class financing.