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Federal Tails And State Puppy Dogs: Preempting Parallel State Wage Claims To Preserve The Integrity Of Federal Group Wage Actions , Rachel K. Alexander

American University Law Review

This article addresses the flood of litigation washing through United States federal courts on wage-and-hour group actions and the divergent corresponding district-court rulings. The rapidly growing split in authority relates to the fact that federal law requires that a group wage action be maintained as an opt-in "collective action" while state wage laws may be pursued through an opt-out "class action." With little circuit-court authority on the matter, the parties' arguments and courts' analysis fall all over the map. Despite the myriad of arguments in support of and in opposition to maintaining a state-law opt-out class action in the same …