Yet again, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has closed the courthouse doors to an individual seeking redress against a corporation. A registered nurse had sued the Northeast Philly nursing home where she worked because she was being docked pay for lunchtime hours during which she was in fact working, and the Court has barred her claim on behalf of herself and her coworkers because she refused to accept a settlement offer from her employer for the full extent of her personal claim (including attorney's fees) because it only covered her, and not others similarly situated.

There's a lot of procedural mumbo-jumbo involved in today's Supreme Court decision in Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk, so I'll try to make things as simple (and easy to pronounce: it's sim-chick) as possible so we can leap ahead to an absolutely badass dissent by Justice Kagan.

Justice Thomas' decision for the majority (the five you'd expect) relies on the fact that while Laurie Symczyk pleaded on behalf of herself and others similarly situated, no such person had formally entered parallel FLSA claims in this case, such that once Symczyk received an official offer covering the entirety of her claims it mooted any "case or controversy" which had existed:

In the absence of any claimant’s opting in, respondent’s suit became moot when her individual claim became moot, because she lacked any personal interest in representing others in this action. While the FLSA authorizes an aggrieved employee to bring an action on behalf of himself and “other employees similarly situated,” the mere presence of collective-action allegations in the complaint cannot save the suit from mootness once the individual claim is satisfied.

The Court today resolves an imaginary question, based on a mistake the courts below made about this case and others like it. The issue here, the majority tells us, is whether a “collective action” brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) “is justiciable when the lone plaintiff’s individual claim becomes moot.” Embedded within that question is a crucial premise: that the individual claim has become moot, as the lower courts held and the majority assumes without deciding. But what if that premise is bogus? What if the plaintiff’s individual claim here never became moot? And what if, in addition, no similar claim for damages will ever become moot? In that event, the majority’s decision—founded as it is on an unfounded assumption—would have no real-world meaning or application. The decision would turn out to be the most one-off of one-offs, explaining only what (the majority thinks) should happen to a proposed collective FLSA action when something that in fact never happens to an individual FLSA claim is errantly thought to have done so. That is the case here, for reasons I’ll describe. Feel free to relegate the majority’s decision to the furthest reaches of your mind: The situation it addresses should never again arise.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Now read the Justice Kagan dissent. There's something rhetorically here which reminded one friend from law school of Judge Richard Posner, or Prof. Richard Epstein, in terms of possessing and sustaining a tone of this is easy, and you people are idiots for thinking otherwise. Shame on you. From the top, then:Let's continue, shall we?