76
Opinion of the Court
U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., if "he first pursues his grievance to final arbitration under the nondiscrimination clause of a collective-bargaining agreement." 415 U. S., at 49. In rejecting the argument that the doctrine of election of remedies barred the Title VII lawsuit, we reasoned that a grievance is designed to vindicate a "contractual right" under a CBA, while a lawsuit under Title VII asserts "independent statutory rights accorded by Congress." Id., at 49-50. The statutory cause of action was not waived by the union's agreement to the arbitration provision of the CBA, since "there can be no prospective waiver of an employee's rights under Title VII." Id., at 51. We have followed the holding of Gardner-Denver in deciding the effect of CBA arbitration upon employee claims under other statutes. See McDonald v. West Branch, 466 U. S. 284 (1984) (claim under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983); Barrentine v. Arkansas-Best Freight System, Inc., 450 U. S. 728 (1981) (claim under Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq.).
The second line of cases implicated here is represented by Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., supra, which held that a claim brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq., could be subject to compulsory arbitration pursuant to an arbitration provision in a securities registration form. Relying upon the federal policy favoring arbitration embodied in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., we said that "statutory claims may be the subject of an arbitration agreement, enforceable pursuant to the FAA." 500 U. S., at 26 (citing Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477 (1989); Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220 (1987); Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614 (1985)).
There is obviously some tension between these two lines of cases. Whereas Gardner-Denver stated that "an employee's
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