Southwest Airlines Ramp Worker’s Overtime Suit Can Stay in Court

A Southwest Airlines Co. employee’s claim that the company failed to pay ramp supervisors for overtime won’t have to go to arbitration because they are transportation workers, a federal appeals court decided Wednesday.

Latrice Saxon falls under the transportation worker exemption from the Federal Arbitration Act’s usual presumption in favor of arbitration because her job responsibilities include transporting cargo, which is an essential part of commerce, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said.

“Airplane cargo loaders, as a class, are engaged in that commerce, in much the way that seamen and railroad employees were, and Saxon and ...