{"id":10049,"date":"2026-03-23T05:11:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T05:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/second-circuit-upholds-the-enforceability-of-an-arbitration-filing-deadline-and-finds-litigants-cannot-evade-arbitral-confidentiality-rules-in-court-filings\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T05:11:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T05:11:44","slug":"second-circuit-upholds-the-enforceability-of-an-arbitration-filing-deadline-and-finds-litigants-cannot-evade-arbitral-confidentiality-rules-in-court-filings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/second-circuit-upholds-the-enforceability-of-an-arbitration-filing-deadline-and-finds-litigants-cannot-evade-arbitral-confidentiality-rules-in-court-filings\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Circuit Upholds the Enforceability of an Arbitration Filing Deadline, and Finds Litigants Cannot Evade Arbitral Confidentiality Rules in Court Filings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On August 4, 2023, in In re IBM Arbitration Agreement Litigation<\/em>, the Second Circuit upheld<\/a> an arbitration agreement that required employees to arbitrate any claims arising from their termination and that set a deadline for filing claims, including age discrimination claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA). In doing so, the Second Circuit rejected plaintiffs\u2019 claims that this latter provision was unenforceable because it did not incorporate a \u201cpiggybacking\u201d rule\u2060\u2014a judicial exception to the ADEA\u2019s administrative exhaustion requirements\u2060\u2014finding that this rule was not a substantive right and was therefore subject to waiver in a contract. The Second Circuit also found that the presumption of public access to judicial documents is outweighed by the Federal Arbitration Act\u2019s (FAA) strong policy in favor of enforcing arbitral confidentiality provisions and concluded that plaintiffs could not evade their confidentiality obligations by attaching confidential documents to a motion.<\/p>\n

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Background<\/h3>\n

Plaintiffs are a group of former IBM employees<\/a>, all of whom were over 40 years old when terminated, who alleged that IBM forced out thousands of older employees in order better to compete with newer technology companies. Upon their termination, the 26 plaintiffs entered into separation agreements with IBM that included an arbitration provision that, among other things, specified deadlines for filing claims and included confidentiality obligations. Plaintiffs missed the deadline set forth in the arbitration provision to bring the ADEA claims, but nevertheless thereafter tried to bring those claims in arbitration. After the plaintiffs\u2019 arbitrations were dismissed in an arbitral forum as untimely, plaintiffs brought suit seeking a declaration that the deadline was unenforceable because it did not incorporate the \u201cpiggybacking\u201d rule\u2060\u2014a judge-made exception to the ADEA\u2019s exhaustion requirements.<\/p>\n

Piggybacking Rule<\/u>. The ADEA requires that a prospective plaintiff file a charge with the EEOC at least 60 days before filing an ADEA suit in federal court. And, a plaintiff seeking to pursue an ADEA claim must file an EEOC charge within 300 days<\/a> of the alleged discriminatory conduct. But, the single-filing rule, or piggybacking rule, is a procedural exception to this timing requirement, which arises out of case law. Under the piggybacking rule, where more than one plaintiff<\/a> allegedly has claims \u201caris[ing] out of similar discriminatory treatment in the same time frame,\u201d and one plaintiff has timely filed his EEOC complaint, additional plaintiffs may join that action later and their claims will be considered timely. In other words, a second plaintiff can \u201cpiggyback\u201d onto the first plaintiff\u2019s timely EEOC filing. In this case, other former IBM employees had timely filed ADEA claims with the EEOC, and plaintiffs\u2060\u2014who had missed the deadline\u2060\u2014sought to \u201cpiggyback\u201d off those charges.<\/p>\n

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court\u2019s rejection of plaintiffs\u2019 argument that the piggybacking rule affords plaintiffs a substantive right under the ADEA. Citing the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in 14 Penn Plaza LLC<\/em> v. Pyett<\/em>, 556\u00a0U.S.\u00a0247 (2009), along with prior Second Circuit precedent, the Second Circuit found that \u201cthe piggybacking rule is not a substantive right under the ADEA and is thus waivable.\u201d In other words, because the ADEA\u2019s limitations period is a procedural right, and not a substantive right, it may be waived by contract.<\/p>\n

Confidentiality Concerns<\/u>. The district court also addressed what it described as a \u201chousekeeping matter,\u201d but which is an issue that often has great significance for employers in litigation\u2014IBM\u2019s motion to seal<\/a> confidential documents obtained by plaintiffs\u2019 counsel, who represented claimants bringing ADEA claims against IBM in many confidential arbitration proceedings with IBM, and submitted by plaintiffs as purported global evidence of IBM\u2019s alleged scheme to discriminate against workers on the basis of age as part of their motion for summary judgment. IBM opposed plaintiffs\u2019 motion for summary judgment, moved to seal plaintiffs\u2019 motion, and moved to dismiss under Rule\u00a012(b)(6). The court granted IBM\u2019s motion to seal upon finding that the documents were not \u201cjudicial documents\u201d and were \u201csubject to only a weak presumption of public access\u201d that was overridden by \u201cthe FAA\u2019s strong policy in favor of enforcing arbitral confidentiality provisions,\u201d and granted<\/a> IBM\u2019s motion to dismiss. In doing so, the district court noted that plaintiffs had initially sued to invalidate the confidentiality provision at issue, and found that denying IBM\u2019s sealing request \u201cwould be to grant Plaintiffs the relief they sought in the first instance.\u201d In upholding this decision, the Second Circuit found<\/a> that \u201c[t]he district court correctly observed that allowing unsealing under such circumstances would create a legal loophole allowing parties to evade confidentiality agreements simply by attaching documents to court filings.\u2026 Plaintiffs\u2019 counsel may not end-run the Confidentiality Provision by filing protected materials and then invoking the presumption of access to judicial documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Implications<\/h3>\n

The Second Circuit decision is part of a continuing trend by the courts to enforce employee arbitration agreements. As noted<\/a> by the Second Circuit, quoting Supreme Court precedent, under the FAA, \u201ccourts must rigorously enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms, including\u00a0\u2026 the rules under which that arbitration will be conducted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, the Second Circuit determined that the piggybacking rule was subject to waiver by contract given that it was not a substantive right. Accordingly, employers should ensure arbitration agreements do not seek waiver of substantive rights to ensure the enforceability of such agreements. In this case, the procedural \u201cpiggybacking rule\u201d did not seek to shorten the applicable ADEA limitations period, but there have been recent decisions by other courts finding that parties may agree to contractually shorten a limitations period in an arbitration, see<\/em>, e.g.<\/em>, Rusis<\/em> v. Int\u2019l Bus. Machs. Corp.<\/em>, 529 F.\u00a0Supp.\u00a03d\u00a0178 (S.D.N.Y. 2021), to the extent that such an agreement does not make the statutory limitations period unreasonably short and therefore operate as a waiver of the plaintiff\u2019s claim, see<\/em>, e.g.<\/em>, Castellanos<\/em> v. Raymours Furniture Co.<\/em>, 291 F.\u00a0Supp.\u00a03d\u00a0294 (E.D.N.Y. 2018); Boaz v. FedEx Customer Info. Servs., Inc.<\/em>, 725\u00a0F.3d\u00a0603 (6th\u00a0Cir. 2013); Ragone<\/em> v. Atl. Video at Manhattan Ctr.<\/em>, 595 F.3d\u00a0115 (2d\u00a0Cir. 2010). Further, this decision is an important precedent for employers seeking to continue to maintain the confidentiality of arbitration documents that are filed in connection with court proceedings.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On August 4, 2023, in In re IBM Arbitration Agreement Litigation, the Second Circuit upheld an arbitration agreement that required employees to arbitrate any claims arising from their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7595,1713,610,7246,143,2317,7593,7594,1377,2148,674,4750,351,483],"class_list":["post-10049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-arbitral","tag-arbitration","tag-circuit","tag-confidentiality","tag-court","tag-deadline","tag-enforceability","tag-evade","tag-filing","tag-filings","tag-finds","tag-litigants","tag-rules","tag-upholds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}