Pilak v. Uber Technologies

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI
EASTERN DIVISION
AYKUT PILAK, 	)
)
Plaintiff, 	)
)
v. 	) 	Case No. 4:25-CV-456-ZMB
)
UBER TECHNOLOGIES, 	)
)
Defendant. 	)
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
This matter is before the Court on Defendant Uber Technologies’s Motion to Compel
Arbitration, Doc. 13, and self-represented Plaintiff Aykut Pilak’s motions for leave to file various
documents, Docs. 20, 23, 30. Because Pilak entered into binding arbitration agreements with Uber,
the Court grants Uber’s Motion to Compel Arbitration and denies the remaining motions as moot.
BACKGROUND
I. 	Factual Background
Pilak alleges that Uber discriminated against him based on his race, national origin, and
limited English proficiency. Doc. 1 at 5. In particular, the Complaint alleges that Uber manipulated
his “acceptance rate” and failed to fully compensate and reimburse him in an attempt to push him
off the platform. Id. ¶¶ 3–4. Pilak also raises safety concerns, including that he was assaulted by a
racially motivated passenger. Id. ¶¶ 1–2, 5. However, when Pilak signed up with Uber in 2022, he
entered into four agreements, all of which contain arbitration provisions. See Doc. 14-1 ¶¶ 15–18.
II. 	Procedural Background
Pilak filed his complaint in April 2025. Doc. 1. After initially moving to proceed in forma
pauperis, Pilak paid the filing fee and served Uber. Docs. 2, 6, 9. Several weeks later, Uber filed a
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motion to compel arbitration. Doc. 13. That motion is fully briefed, see Docs. 16, 22, and Pilak
has filed three related motions seeking to expand his arguments.1 Two are effectively motions for
a 	sur-reply, 	with 	the 	first 	attempting 	to 	add 	legal 	arguments 	and 	the 	second 	addressing
“mischaracterizations and disparaging allegations” in Uber’s brief. See Docs. 20, 23. Most recently,
Pilak filed a Motion for Leave to File Supplemental Factual Allegations under Rule 15(b). Doc. 30.
LEGAL STANDARD
The Court’s analysis is guided by the overarching presumption in favor of arbitration
embodied in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). 9 U.S.C. § 2 ( “A written provision in . . . a
contract . . . to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter arising out of such contract or
transaction . . . shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law
or in equity for the revocation of any contract”). The Eighth Circuit has recognized that “the FAA
establishes a ‘liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements.’” Lenz v. Yellow Transp., Inc.,
431 F.3d 348, 351 (8th Cir. 2005) (citation omitted). Further, “[a] motion to compel arbitration must
be granted if a valid arbitration clause exists which encompasses the dispute between the parties.”
M.A. Mortenson Co. v. Saunders Concrete Co., 676 F.3d 1153, 1156–57 (8th Cir. 2012) (quotation
omitted). If the arbitration clause contains a “delegation” provision (deferring to the arbitrator
questions of arbitrability or validity of the contract), then a court “possesses no power to decide
the arbitrability issue.” Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, 586 U.S. 63, 68 (2019)
(citation omitted). “[T]he party resisting arbitration bears the burden of showing [] that the
arbitration provision is invalid . . . .” H&T Fair Hills, Ltd. v. All. Pipeline L.P., 76 F.4th 1093,
1099 (8th Cir. 2023) (citations omitted).
1 The Court notes that its conclusion would not change even if it were to consider Pilak’s supplementary filings.
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Relevant here, the “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other
class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” are exempt from the FAA. 9 U.S.C.
§ 1. The Supreme Court recently held that a “class of workers” is defined by examining “the actual
work that the members of the class, as a whole, typically carry out.” Sw. Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 596
U.S. 450, 456 (2022). A class of workers is “engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” when
they are “actively engaged in transportation of those goods across borders via the channels of
foreign or interstate commerce.” Id. at 458 (quotation omitted).2
DISCUSSION
Pilak does not contest that he accepted contracts containing arbitration clauses or the fact
these clauses cover the claims he brings here. Instead, he challenges the enforceability of these
provisions in two ways. First, he raises a host of constitutional arguments, including that arbitration
would violate his right to a jury trial, and he disputes the validity of the contracts given his English
proficiency at the time he accepted them. Doc. 16-1 at 1–2, 5. Second, Pilak contends that he falls
into the FAA’s “transportation worker” exception, and accordingly, that the arbitration clause is
invalid. Id. at 3–4. The Court addresses each of these arguments in turn.
I. 	Constitutional Claim and English Proficiency
Pilak contends that the arbitration clauses violate the Seventh Amendment by taking away
his right to a jury trial. Id. at 1–2. Further, he claims that, “[w]hen [he] started working for Uber,
[his] English proficiency was insufficient” and that he had “no ability to translate and understand
the contract in Turkish.” Id. at 5. While not explicitly stated, he appears to raise both arguments as
2 The Court believes that Saxon abrogates Lenz’s non-exhaustive eight-factor balancing test, as most of those factors
appear to focus on the individual worker rather than the broader class. See 431 F.3d at 352. Further, the Court finds
that test applies only for workers “one step removed from [transportation]”—in agreement with other courts that have
examined the Lenz test. See, e.g., Osvatics v. Lyft, 535 F. Supp. 3d 1, 20 (D.D.C. 2021); Kowalewski v. Samandarov,
590 F. Supp. 2d 477, 482 n.3 (S.D.N.Y. 2008). But even if the Court were to analyze Pilak’s claims under the Lenz
test, it would find that Uber drivers do not qualify under the transportation-worker exception.
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grounds for the invalidity of the underlying agreements. While the Court normally would address
these claims before enforcing the agreement, the presence of a valid delegation provision in the
contract, see Doc. 14-1 at 28, which Pilak has not challenged, means that these questions are
reserved for an arbitrator. Henry Schein, Inc., 586 U.S. at 68 (2019) (“[A] court may not rule on
the potential merits of the underlying claim that is assigned by contract to an arbitrator even if it
appears to the court to be frivolous.”) (quotations omitted); Shockley v. PrimeLending, 929 F.3d
1012, 1018 (8th Cir. 2019) (“If not challenged directly, we presume the delegation provision is
valid, and, as a result, antecedent questions such as an arbitration contract’s validity will go to the
arbitrator”). Accordingly, these issues cannot undermine Uber’s request to compel arbitration.
II. 	FAA Transportation-Worker Exception
Pilak’s remaining argument is that he falls into the FAA’s transportation-worker exception.
Specifically, Pilak contends that he is excepted from the FAA because he regularly participates in
“interstate commerce” as an Uber driver, in that he routinely transports people between Illinois
and Missouri and makes trips to St. Louis Lambert International Airport and the Amtrak station in
downtown St. Louis. Doc. 16-1 at 3–4. However, every circuit court to consider these arguments
for rideshare drivers has rejected it. See Singh v. Uber Techs., 67 F.4th 550, 553–62 (3d Cir. 2023);
Wallace v. Grubhub Holdings, 970 F.3d 798, 799–803 (7th Cir. 2020); Capriole v. Uber Techs., 7
F.4th 854, 861–66 (9th Cir. 2021); Cunningham v. Lyft, 17 F.4th 244, 249–53 (1st Cir. 2021).
First, consider Pilak’s contention that his transportation of people across state lines
qualifies as participation in interstate commerce. Doc. 16-1 at 4. That argument fails because the
relevant inquiry is not whether an individual worker regularly, or even predominantly, engages in
transportation of goods or people across state lines, but whether the nationwide “class of worker”
is engaged in interstate commerce. Saxon, 596 U.S. at 456. In reaching this conclusion, the Court
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starts, as it must, with the text. Zimmer Radio of Mid-Missouri, Inc. v. FCC, 145 F.4th 828, 844
(8th Cir. 2025). “And the first thing we see in the text of the residual category is that the operative
unit is a ‘class of workers.’ So we know that in determining whether the exemption applies, the
question is not whether the individual worker actually engaged in interstate commerce, but whether
the class of workers to which the complaining worker belonged engaged in interstate commerce.”
Wallace, 970 F.3d at 800 (quotation omitted) (Barrett, J.); accord. Singh, 67 F.4th at 556; Capriole,
7 F.4th at 862. This interpretation makes good sense, as otherwise the FAA would apply differently
to each individual seeking arbitration, requiring a district court to engage in a fact-specific
determination of each individual’s engagement with the channels of interstate commerce. C.f.
Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St., 601 U.S. 246, 253–55 (2024) (rejecting test for
determining whether a class of worker engaged in interstate commerce which required fact-
intensive discovery). As such, the relevant inquiry is whether the nationwide class of Uber drivers
participates in interstate commerce.
Second, the Court considers what it means to be engaged in interstate commerce. Every
circuit court to consider this issue has focused on one question: whether “engagement with
interstate commerce [is] central to the work of Uber drivers?” Singh, 67 F.4th at 560; Wallace, 970
F.3d at 802; Capriole, 7 F.4th at 865–66; Cunningham, 17 F.4th at 253. In determining that rideshare
drivers are not participants in interstate commerce, many circuit courts have relied on the Supreme
Court’s decision in United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 332 U.S. 218, 228–29 (1947), overruled on
other grounds by Copperweld Corp. v. Indep. Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752 (1984). There, the Supreme
Court held that local taxicabs, which “merely convey[ed] interstate train passengers between their
homes and the railroad station in the normal course of their independent local service” were not “an
integral part of interstate transportation.” Id. at 228–33. Similarly, rideshare drivers as a class are not
at their core engaged in interstate commerce, even if some (like Pilak) may regularly participate in
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interstate trips because of geographic quirks. Singh, 67 F.4th at 560; Capriole, 7 F.4th at 864–65;
Cunningham, 17 F.4th at 252–53. Thus, Pilak has failed to meet his burden of showing that Uber
drivers are a class of worker engaged in interstate commerce. Consequently, the only information
available here comes from findings made by other courts, which have consistently found that these
workers do not, as a nationwide class, participate in interstate commerce. Singh, 67 F.4th at 560–
61 (noting that 2.5 percent of Uber’s trips are interstate); Capriole, 7 F.4th at 864 (noting that only
10.1 percent of trips began or ended at an airport). As such, the Court concludes that Pilak does not
fall into the transportation-worker exception of the FAA.
CONCLUSION
Accordingly, the Court GRANTS Defendant Uber Technologies’s [13] Motion to Compel
Arbitration and DENIES as moot Plaintiff Aykut Pilak’s [20] Motion for Leave to File
Memoranda Regarding the Scope of FAA’s § 1 Exemption, [23] Motion for Leave to File Sur-
Reply, and [30] Motion for Leave to File Supplemental Factual Allegations. Further, the Court
STAYS this case pending the outcome of the arbitration. See Doc. 13 at 1; 9 U.S.C. § 3.
So ordered this 27th day of January 2026.
ZACHARY M. BLUESTONE
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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