Rashaan Carter v. SP Plus Corporation

── Rashaan Carter v. SP Plus Corporation ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: April 15, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 25-2127 RASHAAN CARTER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SP PLUS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 25-cv-312 — Elaine E. Bucklo, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED FEBRUARY 12, 2026 — DECIDED APRIL 15, 2026 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, PRYOR, and MALDONADO, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Shortly after Rashaan Carter filed this suit based on state and federal minimum-wage stat- utes, the district judge entered a stay in favor of arbitration. The stay rested on a box checked during Carter’s “onboard- ing” process at SP Plus, the employer. The district judge later acknowledged that she had jumped the gun by granting the employer’s motion without notice to Carter. SP Plus had accompanied its motion with a 2 No. 25-2127 declaration describing its hiring processes and representing that each new employee fully reviews every section of every agreement, so that if a given box has been checked the em- ployee must have given at least verbal assent. But after receiv- ing the district judge’s initial decision, Carter filed an affidavit declaring that Brenjy Etienne, on SP Plus’s human-relations staff, filled out and “signed” most of the forms (including the assent to arbitration) on Carter’s behalf, not explaining what they were and not offering him an option to decline or even allowing him to see the computer screen that set out the choices. If that is so, then Carter has not agreed to arbitrate. This led the district judge to lift her stay, writing that defendant fails to engage with plaintiff’s account of his onboard- ing process, which calls into question defendant’s view that plain- tiff’s consent to arbitrate must be inferred from the presence of the initials “Rc” and a check in the box next to “Employee Electronic Signature” on the electronic document captioned “Mutual Agree- ment to Arbitrate All Claims.” On the record before me, I cannot determine that a valid agreement to arbitrate was formed. Accord- ingly, upon reconsideration, defendant’s motion to stay pending arbitration is denied. At this point SP Plus might have proffered evidence contra- dicting Carter’s affidavit. Instead it filed a notice of appeal, and jurisdiction is the first question we must address. According to 9 U.S.C. §16(a)(1), an appeal may be taken from an order “(A) refusing a stay of any action under section 3 of this title [9 U.S.C. §3], [or] (B) denying a petition under section 4 of this title [9 U.S.C. §4] to order arbitration to pro- ceed”. SP Plus tells us that the district court’s order on recon- sideration is one “denying a petition under section 4 to order arbitration to proceed.” More likely it is one refusing a stay under §3, because Carter rather than SP Plus is the plaintiff. Either way we look at it, however, the judge denied a motion but did not state explicitly whether she had denied SP Plus’s No. 25-2127 3 request for arbitration. Was the district judge’s next step going to be litigation on the merits or an evidentiary hearing to de- termine whether Carter himself checked the box? If the for- mer, then the request for arbitration has been denied, but if the latter, then the decision has simply been postponed. A de- lay during the evaluation of evidence differs from a denial that is appealable under §16(a)(1)(B). Section 4 provides, among other things: Five days’ notice in writing of such ap