Tenth Circuit: Employee Did Not Waive Right to Bring Later Court Action After Union Arbitration Proceeding

On March 16, 2011, the Tenth Circuit overruled a district court decision that dismissed a discrimination claim brought by a former union member.  The district court had determined that, because the former employee and union member had participated in a union arbitration of an anti-discrimination contract clause that had required the arbitrator to analyze the claim under the applicable state and federal law, the former employee had waived his right to seek a judicial remedy.  In reversing the district court, the Tenth Circuit stated that it did not matter that the arbitrator had applied federal law in arbitrating the breach of union contract claim becaue “the district court’s conclusion ignores the ‘distinctly separate nature’ of contractual and statutory rights, which is ‘not vitiated merely because both wree violated as a result of the same factual occurrence.'”  Thus, the Tenth Circuit reiterated the principle that a union employee does not waive his statutory right to bring a claim in a judicial forum unless the specific language of the collective bargaining agreement provides otherwise.