The court also commented that it need not defer to the NLRB’s ruling in D.R. Horton.Last month, the 8th Circuit, in Owen v. Bristol Care, likewise ruled that an employer may include a waiver of the right to bring collective actions under the FLSA in a mandatory arbitration agreement. The court concluded that an arbitration agreement with a collective action waiver falls outside the limitations of D.R. Horton’s holding when the agreement “does not preclude an employee from filing a complaint with an administrative agency such as the Department of Labor (which has jurisdiction over FLSA claims, see 29 U.S.C. § 204)” and when “nothing in the [agreement] precludes any of these agencies from investigating and, if necessary, filing suit on behalf of a class of employees.”As a result, an employer operating in states governed by the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th and 11th circuits and the Eastern District of New York has strong precedents for including FLSA collective action waivers in arbitration agreements.