OCTOBER TERM, 2000
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 99-1379. Argued November 6, 2000—Decided March 21, 2001
A provision in respondent's application for work at petitioner electronics retailer required all employment disputes to be settled by arbitration. After he was hired, respondent filed a state-law employment discrimination action against petitioner, which then sued in federal court to enjoin the state-court action and to compel arbitration pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The District Court entered the requested order. The Ninth Circuit reversed, interpreting § 1 of the FAA—which excludes from that Act's coverage "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce"—to exempt all employment contracts from the FAA's reach.
Held: The § 1 exemption is confined to transportation workers.
Pp. 111-124.
(a) The FAA's coverage provision, § 2, compels judicial enforcement of arbitration agreements "in any . . . contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce." In Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. v. Dobson, 513 U. S. 265, the Court interpreted § 2's "involving commerce" phrase as implementing Congress' intent "to exercise [its] commerce power to the full." Id., at 277. Pp. 111-113.
(b) The Court rejects respondent's contention that the word "transaction" in § 2 extends only to commercial contracts, and that therefore an employment contract is not a "contract evidencing a transaction involving interstate commerce" at all. If that were true, the separate § 1 exemption that is here at issue would be pointless. See, e. g., Pennsylvania Dept. of Public Welfare v. Davenport, 495 U. S. 552, 562. Accordingly, any argument that arbitration agreements in employment contracts are not covered by the FAA must be premised on the language of the § 1 exclusion itself. Pp. 113-114.
(c) The statutory text forecloses the construction that § 1 excludes all employment contracts from the FAA. Respondent relies on Allied-Bruce's expansive reading of "involving commerce" to contend that § 1's "engaged in . . . commerce" language should have a like reach, exempting from the FAA all employment contracts falling within Congress' commerce power. This reading of § 1 runs into the insurmountable tex-
105
Page: Index 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007