The panel denied a petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to vacate the district court’s order compelling arbitration in an Uber driver’s putative class action alleging that the company failed to safeguard his and other drivers’ and riders’ personal information and mishandled a data security breach.
The district court concluded that the Uber driver did not fall within an arbitration exemption set forth in § 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act for workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce. The panel held that, even accepting that there were some tensions between the district court’s ruling and recent circuit cases addressing the scope and application of the exemption, the district court’s decision was not clearly erroneous as a matter of law, as required for granting a writ of mandamus.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2020/09/04/20-70780.pdf