Unite Here Local 1 v. MAGNIFICENT MILE HOTEL MANAGEMENT, LLC, doing busi- ness as Chicago Hotel Collection

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 25-1265
UNITE HERE LOCAL 1,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
M AGNIFICENT M ILE HOTEL M ANAGEMENT, LLC, doing busi-
ness as Chicago Hotel Collection,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:24-cv-00707 — April M. Perry, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED S EPTEMBER 22, 2025 — DECIDED J UNE 5, 2026
____________________
Before EASTERBROOK, R OVNER , and S T. EVE, Circuit Judges.
EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. A hotel fired one of its em-
ployees after he displayed a knife in the workplace and an-
other employee felt threatened. The fired worker’s union filed
a grievance, but the hotel refused to arbitrate. District Judge
Kendall ordered the hotel to proceed using an arbitrator cho-
sen from a list; that arbitrator then found that displaying the
knife justified a suspension without pay but did not supply

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2 No. 25-1265
just cause for discharge. He ordered the employee reinstated,
with back pay less ten days’ wages. The hotel refused to com-
ply, and, in response to a motion to confirm, District Judge
Perry (to whom the case had been transferred) ordered it to
do so. This proceeding was within the court’s subject-matter
jurisdiction under the holding of Jules v. Andre Balazs Proper-
ties, 146 S. Ct. 1209 (2026).
According to the collective bargaining agreement, an arbi-
trator will be chosen randomly from a list of nine persons
named in the agreement. One of the union’s representatives
typed all nine names into the web site www.random.org; it
designated Peter Meyers. The hotel refused to proceed, how-
ever, contending that Meyers should be disqualified because
he was already arbitrating another dispute between the union
and the hotel. When the union asked a federal court to compel
arbitration, the hotel asked the judge to pick an arbitrator un-
der 9 U.S.C. §5, observing that, despite the agreement’s lan-
guage, the union and the employer usually chose arbitrators
by mutual agreement or by striking names from the list until
only one was left.
Section 5 provides:
If in the agreement provision be made for a method of naming or
appointing an arbitrator or arbitrators or an umpire, such method
shall be followed; but if no method be provided therein, or if a
method be provided and any party thereto shall fail to avail him-
self of such method, or if for any other reason there shall be a lapse
in the naming of an arbitrator or arbitrators or umpire, or in filling
a vacancy, then upon the application of either party to the contro-
versy the court shall designate and appoint an arbitrator or arbi-
trators or umpire, as the case may require, who shall act under the
said agreement with the same force and effect as if he or they had
been specifically named therein; and unless otherwise provided
in the agreement the arbitration shall be by a single arbitrator.

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No. 25-1265 3
Judge Kendall thought the dispute covered by the first clause
of the first sentence: if the agreement provides a method for
selecting an arbitrator, that method must be used. She did not
perceive any “lapse” that would justify the judicial selection
of an arbitrator. The fact that union and employer often devi-
ated from the random-selection method does not change that
method or make it inadequate. (The agreement itself says that
union and employer may mutually choose an arbitrator with-
out going through random selection.) The agreement specifies
a method of selection; it does not say that a person chosen for
one dispute is disqualified from later disputes; and the hotel
does not contend that a selection via random.org is anything
other than random. (Well, it does say that the site uses a pseu-
dorandom process, as most computer randomizers do, but
humans can’t tell the difference.) That is all we need to say
with respect to Judge Kendall’s role in this proceeding.
Once arbitrator Meyers made his decision, the hotel op-
posed confirmation on the ground that the public policy of
Illinois condemns violence in the workplace. That may well
be, but arbitrator Meyers did not see any violence, and a re-
viewing court cannot upset an arbitrator’s factual conclu-
sions. Major League Baseball Players Association v. Garvey, 532
U.S. 504, 509 (2001). The events were recorded by closed-cir-
cuit video. The arbitrator viewed the events as non-threaten-
ing even though the co-worker was frightened (the fired
worker seemed to be playing with the knife and looked at his
co-worker with a “goofy” expression, the arbitrator found).
Judge Perry timed things out: the fired worker took the knife
out of his pocket at 0:38 seconds on the recording, smiled at
the coworker at 0:41, and returned the knife to his pocket at
0:43. The hotel’s management had known for some time that

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4 No. 25-1265
the worker carried this knife and took it out every so often but
had never used it to injure (or confront) another worker.
Still, the hotel observes, management called the police,
who confiscated the knife because its blade exceeded the local
limit for pocket knives. (It was 3½ inches, and the limit in Chi-
cago is 2½ inches. See Chicago Municipal Code §8-24-020.)
Yet the worker was not charged with a crime or even issued a
ticket. The statute limiting blade length authorizes fines and
imprisonment (Municipal Code §8-24-020(g)) but does not
compel prosecution and is silent about the employment of a
person who displays a forbidden knife.
There is a deeper problem with the hotel’s position: a pub-
lic policy against violence in the workplace is directed against
those who employ violence, not against employers trying to
choose the best methods of curtailing violence. We asked at
argument whether the hotel would have violated any statute,
regulation, or judicial doctrine if it had responded to these
events exactly as the arbitrator did: suspending the knife-
wielder for ten days without pay. The answer was “no”. The
public policy of Illinois simply does not address how employ-
ers address actual or implicit threats of violence at work.
Arbitrators are agents chosen to implement agreements
between the parties. Almost anything the parties can do, arbi-
trators can do as their agents. Arbitrators cannot direct the
parties to violate a statute or transgress the rights of non-par-
ties; arbitrators cannot violate the terms of the contracts they
construe; but subject to these limitations arbitrators may do
what the parties themselves may do. It follows that a hotel
with the legal right to keep a worker on the payroll cannot
complain when an arbitrator does exactly that. We have said
this over and over when employers invoke “public policy” as

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No. 25-1265 5
grounds for defeating arbitrators’ awards. See, e.g., Widell v.
Wolf, 43 F.3d 1150 (7th Cir. 1994); Pierce v. Commonwealth Edi-
son Co., 112 F.3d 893 (7th Cir. 1997); George Watts & Son, Inc. v.
Tiffany & Co., 248 F.3d 577 (7th Cir. 2001); Affymax, Inc. v. Or-
tho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 660 F.3d 281 (7th Cir.
2011); Hyatt Franchising, L.L.C. v. Shen Zhen New World I, LLC,
876 F.3d 900, 902–03 (7th Cir. 2017). See also Eastern Associated
Coal Corp. v. United Mine Workers, 531 U.S. 57 (2000). It is more
than a little disappointing that counsel for the hotel ignored
all of these decisions.
There’s nothing wrong with either the arbitrator’s selec-
tion or the substance of his decision, so the judgment confirm-
ing the award is
AFFIRMED.

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