As more employees feel empowered by the #MeToo movement to discuss workplace sexual harassment claims in public, some experts worry that Monday’s Supreme Court ruling could undermine that effort.

Under the 5-4 ruling, employers can limit workers’ ability to band together in court to pursue redress for labor violations. The practice, known as forced arbitration, means workers can be contractually obligated to solve disputes out of court and individually, rather than in a class-action suit in front of a jury.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the court’s conclusion was dictated by a federal law favoring arbitration and the court’s precedents. If workers were allowed to band together to press their claims, he wrote, “the virtues Congress originally saw in arbitration, its speed and simplicity and inexpensiveness, would be shorn away and arbitration would wind up looking like the litigation it was meant to displace.”

Many tech companies in Silicon Valley have arbitration agreements in their terms of service agreements and employee contracts. Proponents of arbitration say it allows for speedier, cheaper resolutions to cases out of the public eye, and provides both parties more flexibility than the courts.

But employment contracts that mandate arbitration have kept people like Susan Fowler, a former software engineer at Uber, out of the courtroom. Fowler wrote a blog post about alleged sexism at Uber last year. Her detailed account of her manager propositioning her for sex on her first day on the job spurred a public outcry and an internal investigation that ultimately led to the ouster of co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO.

Fowler said she was required to sign a binding arbitration agreement when she first started working at the San Francisco company, an agreement that later prevented her from suing the company in court.

“In the tech industry, where I work, and where issues of harassment and discrimination remain rampant, nearly every company requires as a condition of employment that its employees sign away their constitutional right to sue it in a court of law and instead agree to take any claims against the company to private arbitration,” she wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than half of American private-sector non-union employees — about 60.1 million workers — are subject to mandatory employment arbitration.

Reacting to pressure from within and without, some tech companies have voluntarily begun curtailing the use of forced arbitration — but on limited terms.

Last year Microsoft became one of the first and most prominent companies to eliminate forced arbitration for employees who make sexual harassment claims.

Uber said this month that it would no longer force employees, riders and drivers with claims of sexual harassment or sexual assault to resolve those matters in arbitration. Instead, they will be allowed to bring cases against the company in open court. Shortly after Uber’s announcement, its rival, Lyft, also of San Francisco, followed suit.

Ceilidh Gao, staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, a pro-labor advocacy nonprofit, said the #MeToo movement highlighted how important it is for workers to come together. Monday’s ruling, she said, threatens that momentum by allowing employers to prevent employees from banding together in court.

“In #MeToo, we see a lot of time, when someone else speaks out and is that first courageous voice, it allows other workers to join in the movement,” she said. “By requiring that workers have to (issue complaints) one by one, the court is essentially saying that a huge portion of workplace violations will never be enforced at all.”

William Gould IV, Stanford law professor and former National Labor Relations Board chairman, notes that the companies’ new policies apply only to sexual harassment claims. Forced arbitration remains intact for other employee claims, such as wage and racial discrimination.

Gould said Monday’s Supreme Court ruling could encourage employers to adopt arbitration agreements: “Why not eliminate your liability before going into court and being confronted by the government?”

Gregory F. Jacob, a lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, said the decision would have a limited impact, as many employers already use contested arbitration clauses.

“This decision thus will not see a huge increase in the use of such provisions,” he said, “but it does protect employers’ settled expectations and avoids placing our nation’s job providers under the threat of additional burdensome litigation drain.”

A California bill introduced last month by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, would ban employers from requiring workers to agree to arbitration for workplace complaints. Employers could request such agreement, but would be barred from retaliating against employees who refuse.

Because the California bill does not directly address class actions, the issue at the heart of Monday’s case, the impact of the Supreme Court ruling on the state bill is unclear, said Jeanne Christensen, a lawyer who has pursued discrimination and harassment class actions.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench Monday, a sign of profound disagreement.

In her written dissent, she called the majority opinion “egregiously wrong.” In her oral statement, she said the upshot of the decision “will be huge underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers.”

Ginsburg called on Congress to address the matter.

Christensen said the ruling, rather than discouraging workers, may embolden them to demand better treatment.

“Collectively, women can continue to demand that employers and companies can’t silence them for their experiences. They can continue to speak out and demand that companies voluntarily change their policies,” she said. “They just had five men decide that they couldn’t do this. If anything, it’s going to cause them to take a hard look at this and say, ‘Enough.’”

The New York Times

contributed to this report.

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani