Lori Andrus, Andrus Anderson. Photo: John Disney/ ALM

An ex-associate who accused Steptoe & Johnson of inequitable pay based on gender has dropped her case in light of last month's U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding arbitration agreements that bar class actions over employment matters.

Ji-In Houck, who sued a year ago, stipulated to the dismissal of her case on May 31. She filed a demand for arbitration before JAMS in Los Angeles on June 1.

Steptoe & Johnson had previously moved to arbitrate her claims, while Houck filed a motion to certify a class. But before ruling on either motion, U.S. District Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California stayed the lawsuit on Nov. 21 pending the Supreme Court's decision in a trio of cases over the legality of class action waivers in employment arbitration agreements.

On May 21, the Supreme Court upheld those bans in NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Epic Systems v. Lewis and Ernst & Young v. Morris.

“The impact is absolutely massive,” said Lori Andrus, of Andrus Anderson, who represented Houck. “Lewis v. Epic Systems just shut the door.”

Steptoe & Johnson's lawyer, Dipanwita Amar of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer in San Francisco, said in an emailed statement that the case “was never about equal pay for women associates at Steptoe generally, but rather, Ms. Houck's own unique career path.”

“Steptoe's compensation practices generally, and specifically with respect to contract attorneys and associates, are strictly gender-neutral,” she added. “So too are leadership and professional opportunities. The firm's vice chair is a woman, a number of the firm's practice departments and management teams are headed by women, the firm's compensation committee has equal numbers of men and women, and women comprised 75 percent of the most recent partner class and 50 and 80 percent of the two prior classes.”

Steptoe & Johnson is one of at least six law firms sued for gender discrimination in their pay practices. Other firms include Chadbourne & Parke (now part of Norton Rose Fulbright), Winston & Strawn, Proskauer Rose, Sedgwick, Morrison & Foerster and Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart. The cases against Chadbourne and Sedgwick have settled.

In the Steptoe & Johnson case, Houck, who graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2011, worked in the firm's Century City office in Los Angeles. She saw her salary rise from $85,000 as a contract attorney when she joined in 2013 to $200,000 as an associate when she left in 2016—but that was far less than what her male colleagues in similar positions were earning, she alleged.

Andrus said not all the pending cases necessarily face dismissal following the Supreme Court's decision. In older cases, plaintiffs could argue that the defendants waived their arbitration arguments, and some arbitration contracts could be invalid.

“We made some of those arguments to Judge Wright in our case, but he didn't agree with us,” Andrus said.

Even before the Supreme Court ruling, however, judges in the cases against Sedgwick and Winston & Strawn had sent claims to arbitration.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which represented Winston & Strawn in that case, pledged to strip mandatory arbitration agreements for its employees earlier this year following a social media controversy involving Munger, Tolles & Olson. More than a dozen law schools, including Yale Law School, have required law firms hiring on campus to disclose whether they require arbitration agreements for summer associates.

“I would like to see Steptoe & Johnson following that trend, but I guess they're not, so we're prepared to prosecute this case individually,” Andrus said.