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Yesterday, the Supreme Court held in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (pdf) that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts a California rule invalidating arbitration agreements that provide for arbitration of an employee’s own claims under California’s Private Attorney General Act (PAGA), but waive the employee’s ability to assert PAGA claims affecting others.

The decision is enormously important to companies seeking to enforce workplace arbitration agreements in California. The decision also provides businesses with powerful arguments that California laws restricting arbitration in the consumer setting are preempted as well. (Disclosure: we filed an amicus brief (pdf) in support of the petition…

Continue Reading Supreme Court strikes down California rule barring individualized arbitration of California PAGA claims

In AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) preempts state-law rules barring enforcement of an arbitration agreement if the agreement does not permit the parties to utilize class procedures in arbitration or in court. Before Concepcion, the law of California included that limitation on the enforceability of arbitration agreements, but Concepcion declared that rule invalid as a matter of federal law. Yesterday, in DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia (pdf), the Supreme Court held that Section 2 preempts a state-law interpretation of an arbitration agreement based on a legal rule that the state’s courts had applied only in the arbitration context, concluding that the state-law ruling “does not rest ‘upon such grounds as exist . . . for the revocation of any contract.’”

(We filed an amicus brief on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in support of DTV.)Continue Reading Supreme Court Holds that Federal Arbitration Act Preempts California Court’s Interpretation of Arbitration Clause