In Bulic v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., No. 25-21231-CIV-ALTONAGA/Reid, 2025 WL 1783865 (S.D.Fla. June 27, 2025), the court denied defendant’s motion to compel arbitration, based on its interpretation of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA).
The court summarized the facts as follows:
This case arises from an alleged incident of nonconsensual sexual contact aboard one of Defendant’s cruise ships — the Constellation. Defendant, a Panamanian corporation, employed Plaintiff — a citizen and resident of Serbia — as a revenue and marketing director on its vessel. Plaintiff alleges that during a crew party on board the vessel on August 3–4, 2023, she consumed alcohol, became impaired, and later fell asleep in a bar manager’s stateroom. According to Plaintiff, she awoke to discover the ship’s restaurant manager (“M.M.”) engaging in nonconsensual oral-vaginal contact with her. Plaintiff alleges she could not consent or resist due to intoxication. Defendant investigated the incident but merely reassigned M.M. to another vessel rather than terminate him.
[Citations omitted; paragraphing altered.]
Plaintiff asserts two claims: (1) negligence under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 30104; and (2) unseaworthiness under general maritime law.
While plaintiff does not contest that she signed arbitration agreements in connection with her employment aboard Defendant’s cruise ship, nor that the jurisdictional prerequisites are satisfied for enforcement under the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, she asserts that she is exempt from arbitration under the EFAA.
The key point of disagreement is whether the conduct underlying her Jones Act and unseaworthiness claims constitutes a “sexual assault dispute” under 9 U.S.C. §§ 401(3). In particular, defendant contends that, in order to invoke the EFAA’s protections, plaintiff was required to assert her claims under a statute that specifically prohibits sexual assault.
The court disagreed:
[T]he [EFAA] says no such thing. To the contrary, it provides that a person may avoid a pre-dispute arbitration agreement “with respect to a case which is filed under Federal, Tribal, or State law and relates to the sexual assault dispute[.]” 9 U.S.C. § 402(a) (alteration and emphasis added). That language is expansive. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has explained, the ordinary meaning of the phrase “relate[s] to” is broad, “and the words thus express a broad pre-emptive purpose.” …
In addition to mischaracterizing the statute’s text, Defendant leans on case law that offers no real support for its position — most notably Gonzalez v. Carnival Corp., 757 F. Supp. 3d 1314 (S.D. Fla. 2024). There, the court found that the EFAA did not apply where a plaintiff brought a single intentional infliction of emotional distress (“IIED”) claim stemming from her employment without alleging that the conduct violated a statute prohibiting such harassment. The court reasoned that under the EFAA’s sexual harassment prong, a plaintiff must allege conduct that “constitute[s] sexual harassment under applicable Federal, Tribal, or State law.” The court in Gonzalez thus interpreted the sexual harassment prong to require a statutory hook, effectively tying the EFAA’s coverage to the legal theory asserted.
Crucially, however, the reasoning in Gonzalez turned on language specific to the sexual harassment prong — language that does not appear in the statute’s separate definition of a sexual assault dispute. Compare 9 U.S.C. § 401(3), with id. § 401(4). And because this case involves only the sexual assault prong, the Court has no occasion to adopt or reject the interpretation of the sexual harassment prong offered in Gonzalez.
Indeed, the statute’s sexual assault prong imposes no requirement that a plaintiff bring her claim under a law explicitly prohibiting sexual assault. It is enough that the dispute “involv[es] a nonconsensual sexual act or sexual contact,” as defined in 18 U.S.C. section 2246 or similar applicable Tribal or State law. 9 U.S.C. § 401(3) (alteration added). That definition, grounded in the nature of the conduct rather than the legal theory invoked, stands in contrast to the statute’s sexual harassment prong, which has been read to limit coverage to disputes “relating to conduct that is alleged to constitute sexual harassment under applicable” law. Id. § 401(4); see also id. § 401(3). The sexual assault prong’s cross-reference to 18 U.S.C. section 2246 — absent from the sexual harassment prong — reinforces that distinction, supplying a substantive definition of qualifying acts without regard to how they are pleaded or labeled. See id. §§ 401(3)–(4).
The more instructive authority comes from case law interpreting the EFAA’s sexual assault prong, although such decisions remain sparse due to the statute’s recent enactment.
[Citations omitted.]
The court concluded by noting that it interpreted and applied the EFAA according to its plain text. Here, plaintiff satisfied both conditions specified by the statute, namely: “she brings her case under federal law — namely, the Jones Act and general maritime law — and she alleges nonconsensual conduct that qualifies as a ‘sexual assault dispute’ as defined by the statute.”