Dive Brief:
- A former U.S.-based marketing executive for TikTok earned a partial court win in her discrimination and retaliation suit against the company after a federal judge held Thursday that her retaliation claim is protected by the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act.
- The plaintiff in Puris v. TikTok Inc. alleged that the firm maintained a hostile work environment on the basis of sex and fired her after she complained of TikTok’s response to an incident of sexual harassment that she experienced as well as the company’s general treatment of women. Separately, she claimed that TikTok discriminated against her on the basis of her sex, age and disability status and alleged Family and Medical Leave Act interference.
- Judge Denise Cote granted in part and denied in part TikTok’s motions for summary judgment on the claims and denied its motion to compel arbitration, holding that the act applies to retaliation stemming from a report of sexual harassment. The court allowed the plaintiff’s hostile work environment, age discrimination, retaliation and FMLA interference claims to proceed but granted summary judgment to TikTok on her sex discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and her disability claims.
Dive Insight:
TikTok’s case is the latest to see application of Congress’ forced arbitration prohibition. Former President Joe Biden signed the act into law in March 2022, and it has since been tested in courts including the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which held last year that Chipotle could not force an employee to arbitrate claims that she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker.
According to Cote, TikTok claimed that the plaintiff’s retaliation claims were not covered by the act because she did not plausibly plead a retaliation claim and, even if the act did apply to some claims, the rest of her claims had to be severed per the terms of her arbitration agreement.
Cote disagreed with both of these arguments. On the latter, Cote said that the act “does not say that such an agreement is unenforceable with respect to a ‘claim’ of sexual harassment,” but instead stipulates that an agreement is unenforceable with respect to a “‘case’ which relates to the sexual harassment dispute.”
This case is not the first legal action taken by U.S.-based workers against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance. In 2023, two Black employees filed a class-action charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against ByteDance alleging race-based discrimination and retaliation. A year later, a lawsuit filed by inside sales representatives for TikTok alleged it denied the plaintiffs overtime pay.
