Page:Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Frank Varela.pdf/20

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LAMPS PLUS, INC. v. VARELA

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

L. Rev. 286, 323 (2013) (The FAA was “enacted in 1925 with the seemingly limited purpose of overcoming the then-existing ‘judicial hostility’ to the arbitration of contract disputes between businesses.”).

The Court has relied on the FAA, not simply to overcome once-prevalent judicial resistance to enforcement of arbitration disputes between businesses. In relatively recent years, it has routinely deployed the law to deny to employees and consumers “effective relief against powerful economic entities.” DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, 577 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 9). Arbitration clauses, the Court has decreed, may preclude judicial remedies even when submission to arbitration is made a take-it-or-leave-it condition of employment or is imposed on a consumer given no genuine choice in the matter. See Epic, 584 U. S., at ___–___ (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 21–22) (surveying “court decisions expansively interpreting” the FAA); Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 132 (2001) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“There is little doubt that the Court’s interpretation of the [FAA] has given it a scope far beyond the expectations of the Congress that enacted it.”); Miller, supra, at 324 (describing as “extraordinary” “judicial extension of the [FAA] to a vast array of consumer contracts… characterized by their adhesive nature and by the individual’s complete lack of bargaining power”). Propelled by the Court’s decisions, mandatory arbitration clauses in employment and consumer contracts have proliferated. See, e. g., Economic Policy Institute, A. Colvin, The Growing Use of Mandatory Arbitration 2, 4–6 (Apr. 6, 2018) (mandatory arbitration imposed by private-sector employers on nonunionized employees notably increased between 1995 and 2017), online at https://www.epi.org/files/pdf/144131.pdf (all Internet materials as last visited Apr. 22, 2019); Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Arbitration Study §1.4.1 (Mar.