Jessica Combs began working at Netflix, Inc. in May 2017 under an employment agreement containing a broad arbitration clause covering all employment-related disputes. She alleges that soon after starting, Netflix fostered a sexualized office culture, including one-on-one meetings that took on a flirtatious, dating-like tone and encouraged unwanted advances from male colleagues. At a September 2018 company offsite, Combs was required to participate in team-building exercises she considered sexualized, including exercises resembling “forced speed dating,” and she says a stairwell was used by male employees to look under female colleagues’ dresses. During an October 2018 work trip to Singapore, a male colleague made unwanted sexual advances toward her. Combs alleges that between 2017 and 2021 she repeatedly complained to her supervisors and to Netflix management about this sexually charged environment and about specific incidents, but that Netflix ignored her complaints and took no corrective action. In December 2021, Netflix fired Combs; the company cited her noncompliance with its COVID-19 vaccination policy, but Combs alleges the real reason was retaliation for her complaints.

In August 2023, Combs filed an administrative complaint with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing and received an immediate right-to-sue letter. In July 2024, she sued Netflix in California state court on various state-law discrimination, harassment, and hostile-work-environment theories. Netflix removed the case to federal court based on diversity of citizenship and moved to compel arbitration under the parties’ agreement. Combs did not dispute that a valid arbitration agreement existed or that her claims fell within it; instead, she argued that the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA; 9 U.S.C. §401–402), which lets a person alleging sexual harassment elect to proceed in court despite a predispute arbitration agreement, exempted her case from arbitration.

The United States District Court for the Central District of California granted Netflix’s motion to compel arbitration. The court concluded that, even though Combs’s complaint alleged conduct constituting sexual harassment, her claims accrued and her dispute with Netflix arose before the EFAA’s March 3, 2022 effective date, so the statute’s timing provision took her case outside the Act’s reach and the parties’ arbitration agreement controlled.

In the published case of Combs v. Netflix, Inc., No. 25-3164 (9th Cir., July 2026) — the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order compelling arbitration.

The panel first agreed that Combs’s complaint alleged conduct constituting unlawful sexual harassment, so her claims presumptively fell within the EFAA. The dispositive question, one of first impression in the circuit, was how to interpret the EFAA’s timing provision, a statutory note stating that the Act applies to any “dispute or claim that arises or accrues” on or after its March 3, 2022 enactment date. The court held that this phrase describes two distinct concepts — “claims that accrue” and “disputes that arise” — agreeing with the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in Memmer v. United Wholesale Mortgage, LLC (2025) 135 F.4th 398 that Congress used the disjunctive “or” to differentiate them.

On claim accrual, the court applied the settled common-law rule, drawn from Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2024) 603 U.S. 799, which in turn cited Green v. Brennan (2016) 578 U.S. 547, that a claim accrues when a plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action allowing her to file suit and obtain relief. Under that standard, Combs’s claims accrued well before March 3, 2022, since she alleges harassment and a termination that occurred between 2017 and 2021.

The harder question was when a “dispute” arises. The court rejected Combs’s argument that no dispute arises until a formal external complaint is filed with a court or administrative agency, finding that reading too narrow. It also rejected the opposite extreme, urged in similar cases by other employers, that a dispute arises whenever the underlying harassing conduct occurs, since that would collapse the distinct concepts of “dispute” and “claim” into one and render Congress’s use of both terms superfluous. Instead, following the Third Circuit’s decision in Cornelius v. CVS Pharmacy Inc. (2025) 133 F.4th 240 and the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Famuyide v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (2024) 111 F.4th 895, the panel held that a dispute arises under the EFAA when an employee registers disagreement with her employer, through an internal complaint, an external complaint, or otherwise, and the employer expressly or constructively opposes that position. The court noted this same formulation had already been adopted by a California appellate court applying the EFAA, in Kader v. Southern California Medical Center, Inc. (2024) 99 Cal.App.5th 214.

Applying that standard, the panel held that a dispute arose between Combs and Netflix well before the EFAA’s effective date. By the complaint’s own allegations, Combs repeatedly complained to Netflix between 2017 and 2021 about the sexualized culture and specific incidents, and Netflix consistently ignored those complaints and took no corrective action; that pattern of complaint met with inaction showed Netflix had, at minimum, constructively opposed her position. The court found the case closely analogous to Cornelius, where an employee’s repeated written complaints that her employer dismissed and failed to remedy were likewise sufficient to show a pre-2022 dispute. The panel further noted that Netflix’s alleged decision to fire Combs in December 2021 in retaliation for her complaints put the point beyond doubt, since firing an employee for raising a complaint is itself a clear act of opposition to her position. Because both Combs’s claims and her dispute with Netflix arose before March 3, 2022, the EFAA did not apply, and the panel affirmed the order compelling her case to arbitration.