Ginsburg, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 17–988
LAMPS PLUS, INC., ET AL., PETITIONERS v. FRANK VARELA
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[April 24, 2019]
Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Breyer and Justice Sotomayor join, dissenting. Joining Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion in full, I write separately to emphasize once again how treacherously the Court has strayed from the principle that “arbitration is a matter of consent, not coercion.” Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662, 681 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in 1925 “to enable merchants of roughly equal bargaining power to enter into binding agreements to arbitrate commercial disputes.” Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 19) (emphasis in original). The Act was not designed to govern contracts “in which one of the parties characteristically has little bargaining power.” Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 395, 403, n. 9 (1967); see Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 42 (1991) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“I doubt that any legislator who voted for [the FAA] expected it to apply… to form contracts between parties of unequal bargaining power, or to the arbitration of disputes arising out of the employment relationship.”); Miller, Simplified Pleading, Meaningful Days in Court, and Trials on the Merits: Reflections on the Deformation of Federal Procedure, 88 N. Y. U.
