Deel Rippling lawsuit: September 2026 ruling explained

Written by Martynas PupkeviciusFact-checked by Michael Ennis

Updated 11 Nov 2026~12 min read

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Martynas PupkeviciusEOR Advisor and Remote Work Editor

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Michael EnnisSenior Editor and Payroll Specialist

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Reported from company announcements and filings, fact-checked by a second editor against the sources.

Updated 11 Nov 2026 · Published 26 Sep 2026

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What happened

On Friday 25 September 2026, Judge Charles R. Breyer of the US District Court for the Northern District of California issued a 32-page order on three motions in People Center, Inc. v. Deel, Inc. (case 3:25-cv-02576). People Center does business as Rippling. The order denies Deel’s motion to strike the affidavit of former Rippling employee Keith O’Brien and bar his testimony. It grants Rippling’s motion to send part of Deel’s counterclaims to arbitration. It dismisses three other counterclaims with permission to amend and lets part of a fourth, on false advertising, continue.

Rippling’s complaint alleges that Deel recruited O’Brien while he worked at Rippling’s Irish subsidiary and paid him for confidential information. O’Brien described the alleged arrangement in a sworn affidavit attached to Rippling’s amended complaint. Deel denies this: “From the beginning, we have denied these allegations,” it wrote in a blog entry dated 25 March 2026. Its counterclaims allege that Rippling used coercion and payments to obtain a false affidavit. Rippling denies that, The Next Web reported, citing Bloomberg. No court has decided whether Rippling’s claims or Deel’s counterclaims are true. The September order decides only which claims may proceed and where.

The court refused. According to the order, lawyers for Deel and O’Brien were due to meet on the day Deel filed, and Deel canceled after O’Brien’s lawyer had written that his client would not withhold answers on Fifth Amendment grounds. Judge Breyer also refused Deel permission to seek reconsideration of his 23 February 2026 order, and left in place the magistrate judge’s discovery rulings that relied on the affidavit.

That February order, made at the pleading stage, let Rippling’s racketeering claim go forward against Deel and two of its executives, its racketeering conspiracy claim against Deel and three executives, and its federal trade secret claim against Deel. It dismissed Rippling’s three state-law claims and rejected the defendants’ request to have the dispute heard in Ireland.

Four Deel counterclaims are paused and three dismissed with leave to amend

Deel’s amended counterclaims contain eight claims. Four rest at least partly on its allegation that a competitive intelligence manager engaged by Rippling set up a Deel account for a fictitious company and used it from May 2024 to copy Deel documents. Rippling moved to compel arbitration under Deel’s own online Terms of Service. As quoted in the order, those terms send any dispute “relating in any way to” use of Deel’s services to binding arbitration in San Francisco.

Deel opposed the motion, arguing that the account was opened through fraud and that Rippling is not a party to the terms. The judge rejected both arguments. Without deciding whether the alleged access happened, he ordered the counterclaims about that account into arbitration and stayed four counterclaims while it runs: the two computer-access counterclaims, and Deel’s racketeering and racketeering conspiracy counterclaims in their entirety.

Three counterclaims about the web address deal.com were dismissed with permission to amend. Deel alleged that Rippling was behind the address redirecting visitors to Rippling’s site from 2025. The court called that allegation speculative, and noted that Deel had told it in July 2026 that an individual tried to sell Deel the domain around April 2025.

The eighth counterclaim, for false advertising under the Lanham Act, survives in part. Of 32 allegations, most of those saying that two Rippling advertisements and a Rippling comparison web page misdescribed Deel features may proceed. Those about Rippling’s own compliance statements, its blog posts on the litigation and its emails to prospective customers were dismissed, most with permission to amend. The court found the surviving allegations plausibly pleaded and did not find any Rippling statement false.

Date	Event
Date 17 March 2025	Event Rippling sues Deel in the Northern District of California.
Date 24 April 2025	Event Deel sues Rippling in Delaware Superior Court. On 25 April it announces the suit and files three motions against the California suit.
Date 5 June 2025	Event Rippling’s amended complaint adds three Deel executives as defendants.
Date 5 February 2026	Event The Delaware court denies Deel’s motion to disqualify Rippling’s law firm in that case.
Date 23 February 2026	Event Judge Breyer’s written order lets Rippling’s racketeering and federal trade secret claims proceed and dismisses its three state-law claims.
Date 20 March 2026	Event Ireland’s High Court sets aside the joining of Deel’s CEO and two members of its legal team as defendants in Rippling’s Irish case, The Irish Times reported.
Date 25 March 2026	Event Deel files its answer and counterclaims against Rippling, Rippling’s CEO and O’Brien. It amends the counterclaims on 29 May.
Date 14 July 2026	Event Deel moves to strike O’Brien’s affidavit and bar his testimony.
Date 25 September 2026	Event Judge Breyer denies the motion to strike, compels partial arbitration and dismisses three counterclaims with leave to amend.

Deel has filed second amended counterclaims (docket entry 472) since the ruling, according to a magistrate judge’s order of 7 November 2026. We have not seen that filing and cannot say which claims Deel has revised.

On 6 November 2026, Magistrate Judge Lisa J. Cisneros granted Rippling’s request for specified forensic data from three phones used by two Deel executives, and ordered Deel to produce it by 12 November unless a further order pauses the deadline. On 7 November she partly granted a Deel request and ordered Rippling to hand over, by 16 November, certain communications between its lawyers and O’Brien’s lawyers. Both are discovery orders and decide none of the claims.

As of 11 November 2026 we found no public record showing whether the arbitration has begun. Separately, our report on Deel’s purchase of Clarity covers the AI cybersecurity company whose acquisition Deel announced in early August 2026.

Notice terms. Find the notice period for ending the EOR agreement and for offboarding each employee, plus any termination fees. Our employer of record contract checklist lists the clauses to read.
Data export. Ask how employee records and payroll history are exported, in which format, and how long platform access lasts after a contract ends. Our guide on how to switch EOR providers covers the handover.
Security evidence. Deel and Rippling both list SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on their security pages. Ask any provider for the current report and certificate, and read them with our guide to EOR security due diligence.
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A clause in Deel’s online terms decided where part of this dispute will be heard. Ask your provider whether your signed agreement or its online terms governs your account, and read the dispute resolution clause.