Karla Gilbride

Fourteen Defenses before Arbitration

A Taco Bell franchisee answered an overtime lawsuit, asserted fourteen defenses, moved to transfer the case, and entered mediation. Only then did it invoke arbitration. Karla Gilbride asked the Supreme Court to apply the same waiver rule used for every other contract.

Robyn Morgan worked at a Taco Bell restaurant operated by Sundance, a company with more than 150 franchises. Her complaint alleged that employees were directed to clock out and continue working and that recorded hours were shifted between weeks so overtime would not appear.

Sundance litigated. It moved to dismiss, answered, asserted fourteen defenses, sought to move the case into another federal action, and participated in mediation. Nearly eight months after the complaint, it asked the court to compel individual arbitration.

The Eighth Circuit applied a special arbitration-waiver rule requiring Morgan to prove prejudice from the company’s litigation conduct. Ordinary contractual waiver imposes no such requirement. Gilbride argued in the United States Supreme Court that the Federal Arbitration Act places arbitration agreements on equal footing with other contracts rather than above ordinary waiver law.

Equal Treatment Means Equal Treatment

On May 23, 2022, a unanimous Supreme Court agreed. Courts may not invent arbitration-specific procedural rules based on a policy favoring arbitration. The policy means enforcing arbitration agreements on their terms, as courts enforce other contracts.

The decision removed prejudice from the federal waiver inquiry and returned Morgan’s case for application of ordinary contract principles. The lower court retained the waiver and wage questions for further proceedings.

Midland Funding and Arbitration

Clifford Cain’s dispute began with a debt-buyer lawsuit. Midland Funding purchased his credit-card account and sued him in Maryland district court while operating without the collection-agency license state law required. It obtained a $4,520.54 default judgment.

After Maryland courts recognized that judgments obtained by unlicensed collection agencies could be attacked, Cain filed a consumer class action seeking relief tied to Midland’s collection practices. Midland then invoked the arbitration clause in Cain’s original credit-card agreement and argued that his claims had to leave court.

Gilbride was the responsible Public Justice attorney in the Maryland appeal. In March 2017, the state’s highest court held that Midland had waived arbitration by choosing to litigate the related collection claim. Cain’s later claims existed because Midland had filed and pursued the earlier court action. Maryland contract law also did not require Cain to prove separate prejudice before waiver could be found.

Midland had used public adjudication to obtain a judgment against the consumer. It could not treat the same courthouse as unavailable when the consumer challenged the judgment-producing conduct.

Hundreds of Calls to the Wrong Phone

Candy Ray never signed the lease-to-own agreement for a bed purchased by her husband. He listed her mobile number on the account. After a billing dispute, Progressive Leasing began calling her phone to collect his alleged debt.

Ray revoked any consent to receive the calls and said she would not pay another person’s debt. The calls continued from more than a dozen numbers, sometimes three, four, or five times in one day. From March through October 2016, the company placed hundreds of robocalls, leaving her uncertain when it was safe to answer her own phone.

She brought claims under federal telephone law and Florida collection law. Progressive Leasing tried to compel arbitration under the contract her husband had signed. Gilbride and the appellate team represented Ray in the Eleventh Circuit.

The district court held that Ray, a nonsignatory, was not bound. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed in July 2018 because the company failed to challenge the principal Florida-law basis supporting that decision. The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling allowed Ray to litigate her own claims in court. The contract could regulate the people who agreed to it; it did not automatically absorb the spouse whose phone became the collection target.

Dang v. Samsung

Hoai Dang bought a Samsung Galaxy S3. A warranty booklet inside the product box contained an arbitration provision presented among product and safety information. The packaging and transaction receipt did not tell the buyer that receiving the phone would create a freestanding contract governing every dispute with Samsung.

Dang later filed a consumer class action concerning alleged patent-related misrepresentations and loss in phone value. Samsung relied on the booklet and the buyer’s failure to opt out within thirty days. Gilbride served as Public Justice’s responsible attorney.

The Ninth Circuit reversed an order compelling arbitration. Its decision followed the published companion opinion in Norcia v. Samsung: California contract law generally does not convert silence into assent, and a warranty brochure does not put a reasonable buyer on notice that it contains an agreement governing nonwarranty claims.

A contract may be concise or lengthy, digital or printed, negotiated or standardized. It still requires notice and outward assent. The ability to opt out cannot substitute for proof that a person knew an agreement had been offered in the first place.

The Agreement Must Exist before Delegation

Dana Fedor worked as a care coordinator for UnitedHealthcare and brought wage claims with eight other former employees. The workers had begun employment in different years and had seen different versions of the company’s arbitration policy. UnitedHealthcare later relied on a 2016 version containing a delegation clause that assigned disputes about formation to the arbitrator. None of the plaintiffs had seen or signed that version.

Gilbride argued the Tenth Circuit appeal. In September 2020, the court vacated the arbitration order. A delegation clause can assign many threshold questions to an arbitrator once the parties have formed an agreement. It cannot bootstrap itself into existence inside a contract no court has found the parties made.

The judiciary therefore had to decide formation first. Only an agreement actually formed could transfer later questions away from the judge. The court sent the wage action back for a determination of contract formation without deciding the employees’ compensation claims.

A Keypad That Could Be Read by Touch

Blind customers at Container Store locations alleged that point-of-sale devices required them to disclose debit-card PINs to sighted employees because the screens and keypads could not be used independently by touch. The National Federation of the Blind and individual shoppers brought disability-access claims.

The company responded with an arbitration provision in the terms of its loyalty program. Gilbride joined the team defending the customers’ right to remain in court.

The First Circuit affirmed denial of arbitration in 2018. For several customers, the company had not shown that they knew arbitration terms accompanied enrollment. The court also upheld the conclusion that the loyalty-program promise was illusory under the governing agreement language.

The ruling did not decide the accessibility merits. It protected the forum in which blind customers could seek independent and private use of an ordinary payment device. Enrolling in a rewards program could not quietly force their civil-rights claims into arbitration.

Accessible Software for an FBI Analyst

Jahinnslerth Orozco worked as an FBI intelligence analyst. He alleged that the agency used software inaccessible to screen-reading technology even though accessible alternatives were available. The barrier affected the tools through which he performed federal work.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act generally requires federal agencies to procure, develop, maintain, and use accessible electronic and information technology. The district court dismissed Orozco’s suit on the theory that the law gave him no enforceable right to obtain that access.

Gilbride argued in the D.C. Circuit. In February 2023, the court reversed and held that a federal employee may bring the statutory action Congress supplied to enforce Section 508. The D.C. Circuit sent the case back so the court could consider the requested accessible software.

A Driver Cleared to Drive

Victor Robinson completed truck-driving training and obtained the federal exemption required for a Deaf commercial driver. The EEOC proved that Werner Enterprises and its placement affiliate failed to hire him because he is Deaf and failed to provide reasonable accommodation.

The final relief included $300,000 in capped damages, $35,682 in lost wages, prejudgment interest, and an injunction requiring policy, training, and monitoring changes. In July 2025, the Eighth Circuit affirmed. Gilbride supervised the EEOC’s national litigation program during the judgment and appeal.

Routes Assigned by Race

The EEOC’s suit against DHL alleged that Black employees at an Illinois facility were assigned to more difficult and dangerous routes in predominantly Black neighborhoods while white employees received routes in predominantly white areas. The route system affected workload, safety, and opportunity.

A 2024 consent decree required DHL to pay $8.7 million to eighty-three Black employees and subjected the company to four years of monitoring, revised assignment procedures, training, and reporting.

The National Litigation Program

Gilbride was sworn in as EEOC general counsel in October 2023 after Senate confirmation. She was the first person with a known disability appointed to the role. The office directs, coordinates, and supervises the agency’s federal litigation program.

During her tenure, the program brought early enforcement actions under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The new statute requires an interactive effort to identify reasonable workplace changes connected to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. Gilbride framed the stakes directly: a pregnant worker should not have to choose between health and earning a living for the family.

The program also filed cases involving disability access, race, sex, gender identity, and harassment of young workers. The disputes concerned hiring, accommodations, harassment reporting, wages, and continued employment.

The Offices Congress Required

Gilbride joined Public Citizen Litigation Group as deputy director in January 2025. Her current work includes a challenge concerning three Department of Homeland Security oversight bodies: the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman.

Congress assigned those offices responsibilities involving civil-rights complaints, detention oversight, disability access, and immigration-service problems. In March 2025, organizations representing detained people, immigrants, and civil-rights advocates sued after DHS moved to close the offices and placed employees on administrative leave.

The plaintiffs asked the court to preserve the offices’ staffing, authority, and continued operation. The plaintiffs’ January and February 2026 filings seek final relief under the Administrative Procedure Act and separation-of-powers principles.

The constitutional and statutory question is whether the executive branch may disable offices Congress created without following the law that defines their existence and duties.

Arbitration, Accessibility, and Federal Enforcement

Gilbride graduated from Swarthmore College with highest honors and earned her law degree with honors from Georgetown. She clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge Ronald Gould, litigated disability class actions at Disability Rights Advocates, handled employment and fair-housing matters at Mehri & Skalet, and spent nearly a decade at Public Justice before leading the EEOC’s litigation program and returning to Public Citizen.

Her matters span unpaid wages, debt collection, disability access, federal software, workplace equality, and congressional oversight.

Across those fields, Gilbride has litigated arbitration formation, accessible technology, employment discrimination, and statutory limits on executive control of federal agencies.