Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, ARBITRATION—S.D. Fla.: EFAA precludes arbitration of cruise ship employee’s case stemming from sexual assault, (Jul 23, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

“In Defendant’s telling, it is the form of the claim, not the facts of the case, that trigger the EFAA’s applicability.”

Denying Celebrity Cruise’s motion to compel arbitration of the various claims asserted by a cruise ship sommelier who alleged she was sexually assaulted by another crewmember, a federal court in Florida first found that the seafarers’ exemption did not bar application of the FAA to her claims. However, because her action related to a sexual assault dispute within the meaning of the EFAA, the court found it could not compel arbitration (Doe v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., No. 25-CV-21035-RAR (S.D. Fla. July 21, 2025)).

The cruise ship sommelier, a citizen of the United Kingdom, alleged that after having a couple of drinks with other crewmembers at the staff bar, she did not recall very much until she woke up in a coworker’s cabin while he was raping her. She reported the assault to her supervisor and to the police.

Motion to compel. She also sued Celebrity Cruise, asserting numerous claims including negligence under the Jones Act, unseaworthiness, failure to provide maintenance and cure, vicarious liability, sexual assault, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. Celebrity moved to compel arbitration pursuant to a provision in her employment agreement, which provided that “all grievances and any other disputes whatsoever... relating to or in any way connected with [Plaintiff’s] service... shall be referred to and resolved exclusively by mandatory binding arbitration pursuant to the United Nations Conventions on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards[].” The FAA, the court observed, codifies the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Convention) and under the FAA, the United States must give effect to private arbitration agreements made in other New York Convention signatory nations.

FAA applicability. Opposing the motion to compel, the employee first argued that the arbitration agreement was exempt from Section 1 of the FAA, which provides that “nothing herein contained shall apply to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” As a cruise ship employee, she argued, she was a seafarer under the FAA.

In support, she relied on the Supreme Court’s 2019 New Prime, Inc. v. Oliveira decision holding that “a court should decide for itself whether § 1’s ‘contracts of employment’ exclusion applies before ordering arbitration,” and that a domestic arbitration agreement between a truck driver and an interstate trucking company fell within the scope of the exemption. But Oliveira, observed the court here, does not extend to international arbitration agreements under the New York Convention and, further, the Eleventh Circuit has held that Section 1 is inapplicable to international arbitration agreements under the New York Convention. Thus, the seafarer’s exemption did not bar application of the FAA to the employee’s claims.

Arbitrability. For its part, Celebrity argued that because the employment agreement delegated the initial question of arbitrability to an arbitrator, the court could not decide whether the case was arbitrable under the EFAA. Rejecting this contention, the court pointed out that pursuant to the EFAA, its applicability “to an agreement to arbitrate... shall be determined by a court, rather than an arbitrator [ ] irrespective of whether the agreement purports to delegate such determinations to an arbitrator.”

EFAA’s scope. Celebrity next argued that the employee’s claims were not subject to the EFAA because she did not plead a violation of a particular State, Federal, or Tribal law that “specifically prohibits sexual assault,” and claims that rest on factual allegations of sexual assault, but do not plead a violation of a law such as Title VII or a state human rights statute, are not subject to the EFAA.

Sexual assault dispute. Turning to the text of the EFAA, the court noted that the operative provision states that “at the election of the person alleging conduct constituting a sexual harassment dispute or sexual assault dispute... no predispute arbitration agreement or predispute joint-action waiver shall be valid or enforceable with respect to a case which is filed under Federal, Tribal, or State law and relates to the sexual assault dispute or the sexual harassment dispute.” Further, a “sexual assault dispute” is defined as “a dispute involving a nonconsensual sexual act or sexual contact, as such terms are defined in section 2246 of title 18 or similar applicable Tribal or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent.

Dispute. Noting that Congress chose to define the EFAA’s scope in terms of disputes involving nonconsensual acts or sexual contact rather than claims, the court reasoned that a “dispute” denotes “a conflict or controversy, esp. one that has given rise to a particular lawsuit,” while a “claim” is an “assertion of an existing right” or “a right to payment or to an equitable remedy.” “A dispute—a conflict or controversy—may exist where no one has asserted a right to relief, but for a claim to exist, a right must be asserted,” the court explained, noting that “Congress specifically chose to refer to disputes rather than claims in the EFAA, and there is no indication that Congress limited the applicability of the EFAA to claims brought under ‘qualifying statutes’ that use magic words to summon the EFAA’s applicability.”

Moreover, said the court, to qualify as a “sexual assault dispute,” the dispute must be one “involving a nonconsensual sexual act or sexual contact as defined in [18 U.S.C. § 2246] or similar applicable Tribal or State law” and this language did not suggest that Congress limited the EFAA’s applicability to cases where the plaintiff pleads a violation of law that specifically prohibits sexual assault. While Celebrity argued that the reference to 18 U.S.C. § 2246 or similar applicable Tribal or State law is “a legal limitation, requiring plaintiffs to assert that the conduct they describe actually violates a specific statute or Tribal or state law,” that Section, the court observed, is a definitional provision and does not proscribe any conduct. “The definition of ‘sexual assault dispute,’ then, requires only that the ‘dispute’ at issue includes or relates to conduct that meets the definition of ‘sexual act’ or ‘sexual contact’ as set out in § 2246 or similar definitions in Tribal or State law—not that the plaintiff must ‘assert that the conduct they describe actually violates a specific statute or Tribal or state law.’”

Facts, not claims. The court next explained that the EFFA’s use of the phrase “allege conduct constituting a sexual assault or sexual harassment dispute,” makes it clear that a sexual assault dispute is formed by facts, not claims. “It is the conduct that makes the claims subject to the EFAA,” said the court, “not the other way around.” And while a claim must be “filed under Federal, Tribal, or State law,” there is no requirement that the law must be one that prohibits sexual assault. “If Congress had intended to limit the EFAA’s applicability to violations of statutes explicitly prohibiting sexual assault, ‘it could have easily said so.’ Here, it did not.”

As to the EFAA’s requirement that a case must relate to the sexual assault dispute, the court pointed out that if “sexual assault dispute” means an alleged violation of a particular law prohibiting sexual assault, this requirement would be superfluous as the “case” would always “relate to” the sexual assault dispute when the plaintiff alleges a violation of a particular law prohibiting sexual assault. “The text, therefore, points uniformly in one direction: the EFAA demands its application to any case where the facts alleged constitute a sexual assault dispute under the EFAA and the sexual assault dispute relates to the case, irrespective of whether a plaintiff labels her claims as sexual assault claims or brings them under a particular statute.”

Sexual harassment prong. Though Celebrity pointed to a line of cases under the EFAA’s sexual harassment prong limiting the EFAA’s scope to alleged violations of statutes that explicitly prohibit sexual harassment, the court noted that none of those cases were binding on it and even if they were, they were inapposite. Pointing to the differences in the statute’s definition of the two terms, the court noted that the cases upon which Celebrity relied focus on the phrase “alleged to constitute sexual harassment under applicable Federal, Tribal, or State law” to support the conclusion that a plaintiff must “allege” a violation of a Federal, Tribal, or State “law” that proscribes “sexual harassment.”

But the word “allege,” observed the court, is absent entirely from the definition of sexual assault dispute as is the modifying phrase “to constitute sexual harassment under applicable Federal, Tribal, or State law.” Rather, the definition requires only a “dispute involving a nonconsensual sexual act or sexual contact.” The reasoning of those cases, the court stated, “does not extend to sexual assault disputes under the EFAA, so it does not apply to the instant case, in which Plaintiff alleges only sexual assault.”

Having “little trouble concluding that Plaintiff’s action relates to a sexual assault dispute within the meaning of the EFAA,” the court declined to compel arbitration.

The case is No. 25-CV-21035-RAR.

Judge: Ruiz II, R.

Attorneys: Elizabeth Irazabal (Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman) for Jane Doe. Annalisa Gutierrez (Hamilton, Miller & Birthisel) for Celebrity Cruises, Inc.

Companies: Celebrity Cruises, Inc.

Cases: Arbitration SexualHarassment FloridaNews