{"id":10912,"date":"2026-06-09T03:14:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T03:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ab-51-update-judges-opinion-granting-preliminary-injunction-indicates-ab-51-will-ultimately-be-permanently-enjoined\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T03:14:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T03:14:37","slug":"ab-51-update-judges-opinion-granting-preliminary-injunction-indicates-ab-51-will-ultimately-be-permanently-enjoined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/ab-51-update-judges-opinion-granting-preliminary-injunction-indicates-ab-51-will-ultimately-be-permanently-enjoined\/","title":{"rendered":"AB 51 Update: Judge\u2019s Opinion Granting Preliminary Injunction Indicates AB 51 will Ultimately be Permanently Enjoined"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div id=\"contentSummaryCollapse\" style=\"--intro-p-height: 10.3125rem;\">\n<p>\n                        As previously reported, on February\u00a03, 2020, Judge Mueller of the Eastern District of California issued a preliminary injunction enjoining Assembly Bill 51 (\u201cAB 51\u201d), California\u2019s recent legislation prohibiting employers from requiring mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of employment, continued employment, or receipt of employment-related benefits for claims arising under California\u2019s Labor Code or California\u2019s Fair Employment Housing Act.\u00a0<br \/>On February\u00a07, 2020, Judge Mueller issued an opinion detailing the reasoning for that decision.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>In the February\u00a07 opinion, Judge Mueller sided with the plaintiffs, a coalition of business groups, in almost every respect.\u00a0 The District Court agreed plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits that the FAA preempted AB 51 because it (1) treats arbitration agreements differently from other contracts and, (2) conflicts with the purposes and objectives of the FAA, which as the Supreme Court declared, \u201cwas designed to promote arbitration.\u201d\u00a0<em>AT&amp;T Mobility LLC <\/em>v.<em> Concepcion<\/em>, 563 U.S. 333, 345 (2011).\u00a0The District Court rejected the State-Defendants\u2019 attempts to distinguish AB 51 from prior failed legislation that intended to restrict the use of mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of employment, and highlighted that \u201cAB 51\u2019s legislative history acknowledges\u201d that \u201cthe primary target of the bill is agreements to arbitrate.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>The District Court also agreed that if AB 51 takes effect, plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm.\u00a0The Court reasoned that California businesses relying on arbitration agreements as a condition of employment will be forced to choose between risking both criminal and civil penalties and \u201cforegoing the use of arbitration agreements altogether to avoid penalties.\u201d The District Court concluded that \u201cin the unlikely event\u201d AB 51 is not preempted by the FAA, defendants will have \u201csuffered the minimal harm of delayed enforcement.\u201d<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>The District Court made additional concluding observations where it emphasized that in passing AB 51, the California legislature \u201cdid not rely on any data or analyses suggesting that the standard contract defenses are not available as a practical matter to employees who believe they have been coerced or misled into entering into arbitration agreements.\u201d\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>The State has filed a notice of appeal of the District Court\u2019s order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.\u00a0 The State may also move to stay the preliminary injunction pending the outcome of the appeal, however it is unlikely the Ninth Circuit will stay the injunction, which would mean that the District Court\u2019s order preliminarily enjoining the State from enforcing AB 51 would stay in effect pending a ruling from the Ninth Circuit.\n                    <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As previously reported, on February\u00a03, 2020, Judge Mueller of the Eastern District of California issued a preliminary injunction enjoining Assembly Bill 51 (\u201cAB 51\u201d), California\u2019s recent legislation prohibiting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8121,8119,600,915,5612,5822,2352,8120,5544],"class_list":["post-10912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-enjoined","tag-granting","tag-injunction","tag-judges","tag-opinion","tag-permanently","tag-preliminary","tag-ultimately","tag-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10912","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=10912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}