Employment Litigation · Primary-source case analysis

Viking River: Claim Division Was Not a Wholesale PAGA Waiver

By Aneeta Mishra and Timothy Chan

Published April 15, 2026

Decision: Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, No. 20-1573 (U.S. June 15, 2022), official slip opinion.

Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana separated two questions often hidden in the phrase representative PAGA claim: Acting for the State, and seeking penalties for violations involving other employees. Its federal arbitration holding did not validate a wholesale waiver of PAGA. Its separate prediction about California standing was later rejected by California’s Supreme Court in Adolph.

The severability clause mattered to the result

Moriana’s agreement barred class, collective, and representative PAGA proceedings, but also required enforcement of any valid portion of the waiver in arbitration. That severability language allowed the Court to enforce arbitration of the component based on violations she allegedly suffered while leaving the wholesale-waiver prohibition intact. The decision did not treat the word arbitration alone as sufficient to determine every component’s forum. Viking River, slip op. at 5–7, 20–21.

Representative capacity was not the same as claim joinder

The opinion distinguished an employee acting as the State’s proxy from joining violations concerning other employees. It rejected a categorical rule that all representative capacity must be waivable under the FAA. The conflict instead arose from the rule preventing agreed division of individual and non-individual PAGA components, which could expand arbitration beyond the claims the parties agreed to submit. Viking River, slip op. at 6–7, 13–20.

The federal holding and the standing prediction were separate

The Court held that the FAA preempted the anti-division rule and permitted enforcement of Moriana’s agreement as to her individual component. It then predicted that California standing law required dismissal of the remainder. Justice Sotomayor joined the opinion while noting that California courts would have the final word if that state-law understanding was wrong. Viking River, slip op. at 20–22; Sotomayor concurrence at 1–2.

Adolph rejected automatic loss of standing from arbitration

In Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., No. S274671 (Cal. July 17, 2023), official opinion reproduced in the Supreme Court docket appendix, California’s Supreme Court held that ordering the individual PAGA component to arbitration did not itself strip standing to pursue non-individual components. It accepted Viking River’s federal arbitration holding while rejecting its state-law standing prediction. Adolph, slip op. at 9–13, 16–17 (appendix pages 20a–24a, 27a–28a). These opinions explain different issues; neither substitutes for identifying the statutory version governing a present PAGA action.

Key takeaways

• Read the agreement’s waiver and severability provisions together.
• Distinguish acting for the State from aggregating other employees’ violations.
• Do not describe Viking River as enforcing a wholesale waiver of all PAGA rights.
• Do not assume individual arbitration automatically requires dismissal of the remaining PAGA components.