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WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices used the case of a kitchen worker, fired after a seizure on the job, to argue with each other Wednesday about the government’s role in combating discrimination when workers sign away their right to sue. 

Lawyers for Waffle House Inc. and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission didn’t do much of the talking during an hourlong oral argument.  

Instead, justices who are typically ideological opposites argued among themselves over the ramifications of letting the EEOC do for an employee what  

the employee could or would not do for himself. The case involves the intersection of arbitration agreements, an increasingly common condition of employment, and the traditional role of the EEOC in rooting out workplace discrimination. 

The agency takes a small number of cases to federal court, where it tries to make an example of discriminators by winning money or other damages.  

The government maintains it has a duty to do that even if an alleged victim is among the 10 percent of American workers covered by binding arbitration agreements. 

Waffle House, backed by business groups, counters that a binding arbitration agreement should be just that. 

Eric Scott Baker agreed to arbitration when he applied for a job in Columbia, S.C., but he went to the EEOC when he was fired in 1994.  

The agency sued in federal court for an alleged violation of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. 

Ignoring the particulars of Baker’s case, Justice Antonin Scalia prodded the government lawyer to explain what would happen if an employee already had gone through arbitration and settled a discrimination complaint. 

Would the EEOC still have power to come in and essentially force a do-over in federal court?  

Yes, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement managed to reply after  

several interruptions, but that is not the situation here. 

“Wow,” Scalia said under his breath. 

Scalia was in the conservative five-member majority when the court ruled in March that employers can force workers to take job-related disputes to arbitration rather than to court. 

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority decision in that earlier case, continued posing what-ifs to Clement.  

The government lawyer repeatedly tried to return to Baker’s situation, but an unusually curt Kennedy cut him off. 

“We’re asking what the logical consequence of your proposition is,” Kennedy said. “That’s why we’re asking about a harder case.” 

In March, the court found no broad exception to a federal law governing arbitration agreements. The court could use the Baker case to go a step further by ruling that the same Federal Arbitration Act precludes this kind of suit by the EEOC. 

Critics of arbitration clauses say workers often don’t read the legal fine print and don’t realize what rights they are signing away. 

Business groups generally champion arbitration as a cheaper, fairer alternative to the courtroom. Both sides make arguments to an outside arbitrator, whose decision is supposed to be final. 

When it was Waffle House lawyer David Gordon’s turn at the podium, a relative liberal on the court had hypothetical questions of his own. 

What if a wronged employee was too lazy, or cowed, or indifferent, to press a discrimination claim, Justice Stephen Breyer asked. Wouldn’t the EEOC be free to sue anyway, if winning the case would serve the public interest? And what would it matter, then, if the uncooperative employee had earlier agreed to arbitration? 

Scalia swooped in to answer that it did matter. 

Justice Clarence Thomas was head of the EEOC during the Reagan administration and thus has the court’s most direct experience with this kind of case. He followed his custom of saying nothing during the argument session. 

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On the Net: 

Supreme Court site: http://www.supremecourtus.gov 

For the appeals court ruling in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Waffle House: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 4th Circuit.