In her latest play involving class actions with multiple state laws, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta dissented from a ruling certifying classes of minor league baseball players that she said “could have dire consequences for employers and employees.”

Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee, dissented from a Friday decision in which the majority of a Ninth Circuit panel certified a class of minor league baseball players suing Major League Baseball and most of the 30 franchise teams for minimum wages and unpaid overtime. The majority also reversed a district judge’s refusal to certify players who sought minimum wages for spring training that took place in Arizona and Florida.

Such a holding failed to analyze the differences in the various wage laws of California, Florida and Arizona, Ikuta wrote in her dissent, which are only three of the 19 states in which the players resided.

“On the other hand, the rule the majority establishes today could have dire consequences for employers and employees,” she wrote. “For example, a rule requiring that the law of the situs always applies would require employers to research and comply with various states’ laws whenever their employees traveled for short conferences or business meetings. An employer would have to research applicable state law whenever an employee traveled across state lines, including when an employee was in transit.”

Ikuta took a similar view last year when she wrote an opinion decertifying a nationwide settlement with Hyundai Motor America Inc. and Kia Motors America Inc. in a consumer class action. She found that the district judge in that case had failed to consider potential differences in various state laws—a process called a “choice-of-law” analysis—in finding that common issues predominated so as to approve the settlement under the Federal Rule 23 of Civil Procedure.

The Hyundai ruling sent shock waves throughout the class action bar for potentially threatening the ability of lawyers to get nationwide settlements. An en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit overturned the ruling in a June 6 decision from which Ikuta dissented. Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, who wrote the en banc decision, had dissented in the 2018 opinion, which she said imposed a strict set of requirements that “deals a major blow to multistate class actions.”

In the baseball case, Circuit Judge Richard Paez, writing for the majority, acknowledged the Hyundai case.

“We have been particularly concerned about the impact of choice-of-law inquiries in nationwide consumer class actions and product liability cases,” he wrote.

He summarized the case with this introduction: “It is often said that baseball is America’s pastime. In this case, current and former minor league baseball players allege that the American tradition of baseball collides with a tradition far less benign: the exploitation of workers.”

Both sides had appealed a 2017 class certification decision by Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero in the Northern District of California. Major League Baseball and its franchise teams, as employers of thousands of minor league players, had asked the Ninth Circuit to reverse certification of class members who played games in California, as well as a collective action brought under the Federal Labor Standards Act in which more than 2,200 players had opted in, as required under the federal law. The players, represented by 45 named plaintiffs, had sought to affirm those holdings and reverse Spero’s ruling not to certify separate classes in Florida and Arizona, where spring training takes place for about four weeks each year.

“Every MLB team has a spring training site in Arizona and Florida,” said Garrett Broshuis, an attorney at Korein Tillery in St. Louis who represented the players. “Every spring, a minor leaguer has to go to Arizona or Florida for full month of spring training. While there, they’re supervised by coaches and aren’t paid at all for that work.”

The majority opinion relied heavily on the same 2011 opinion by the California Supreme Court that Spero had cited in finding that California’s choice-of-law rules applied in the California class. The high court found in Sullivan v. Oracle Corp. the California employers must pay overtime under California law to nonresident employees who work in the state.

The majority also found that, under the same analysis, Arizona law applied to the Arizona class and Florida law to the Florida class.

“The Ninth Circuit looked at the work being performed and saw that Major League Baseball is requiring these players to go these states, and doing this work at permanent work sites in those states, and reached the conclusion that the laws of these states cover the work performed in those boundaries,” Broshuis said.

But Ikuta said the majority “wildly overreads Sullivan,” calling its approach “misguided.” She found that, with leagues in at least 22 states, and MLB based in New York, an analysis of the various state laws, as required under Rule 23’s predominance test, would be a “significant task.”

“No wonder the district court concluded that consideration of the plaintiffs’ claims on a classwide basis would be overwhelmed by individualized choice-of-law inquiries,” she wrote.  “Yet the majority feels empowered to cut through all these complexities by applying a simple rule of its devise: just apply the law of the jurisdiction where the work took place.”

Elise Bloom, a partner in the New York office of Proskauer Rose who argued for the MLB and its teams, did not respond to a request for comment.