Cite as: 532 U. S. 105 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
Concluding that the application was not a "contract of employment" at all, we found it unnecessary to reach the meaning of § 1. See Gilmer, supra, at 25, n. 2. There is no such dispute in this case; while Circuit City argued in its petition for certiorari that the employment application signed by Adams was not a "contract of employment," we declined to grant certiorari on this point. So the issue reserved in Gilmer is presented here.
B
Respondent, at the outset, contends that we need not address the meaning of the § 1 exclusion provision to decide the case in his favor. In his view, an employment contract is not a "contract evidencing a transaction involving interstate commerce" at all, since the word "transaction" in § 2 extends only to commercial contracts. See Craft, 177 F. 3d, at 1085 (concluding that § 2 covers only "commercial deal[s] or merchant's sale[s]"). This line of reasoning proves too much, for it would make the § 1 exclusion provision superfluous. If all contracts of employment are beyond the scope of the Act under the § 2 coverage provision, the separate exemption for "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in . . . interstate commerce" would be pointless. See, e. g., Pennsylvania Dept. of Public Welfare v. Davenport, 495 U. S. 552, 562 (1990) ("Our cases express a deep reluctance to interpret a statutory provision so as to render superfluous other provisions in the same enactment"). The proffered interpretation of "evidencing a transaction involving commerce," furthermore, would be inconsistent with Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20 (1991), where we held that § 2 required the arbitration of an age discrimination claim based on an agreement in a securities registration application, a dispute that did not arise from a "commercial deal or merchant's sale." Nor could respondent's construction of § 2 be reconciled with the expansive reading of those words adopted in Allied-Bruce, 513 U. S., at 277, 279-280. If, then,
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