Cite as: 534 U. S. 279 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
case. They do not permit a court to announce a categorical rule precluding an expressly authorized form of relief as inappropriate in all cases in which the employee has signed an arbitration agreement.8
The Court of Appeals wisely did not adopt respondent's reading of § 706(g). Instead, it simply sought to balance the policy goals of the FAA against the clear language of Title VII and the agreement. While this may be a more coherent approach, it is inconsistent with our recent arbitration cases. The FAA directs courts to place arbitration agreements on equal footing with other contracts, but it "does not require parties to arbitrate when they have not agreed to do so." Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 478 (1989).9 See
8 Justice Thomas implicitly recognizes this distinction by qualifying his description of the courts' role as determining appropriate relief "in any given case," or "in a particular case." See post, at 301, 303. But the Court of Appeals' holding was not so limited. 193 F. 3d 805, 812 (CA4 1999) (holding that the EEOC "may not pursue relief in court . . . specific to individuals who have waived their right to a judicial forum").
9 In Volt, the parties to a construction contract agreed to arbitrate all disputes relating to the contract and specified that California law would apply. When one party sought to compel arbitration, the other invoked a California statute that authorizes a court to stay arbitration pending resolution of related litigation with third parties not bound by the agreement when inconsistent rulings are possible. We concluded that the FAA did not pre-empt the California statute because "the FAA does not confer a right to compel arbitration of any dispute at any time; it confers only the right to obtain an order directing that 'arbitration proceed in the manner provided for in [the parties'] agreement.' " 489 U. S., at 474-475 (quoting 9 U. S. C. § 4). Similarly, the FAA enables respondent to compel Baker to arbitrate his claim, but it does not expand the range of claims subject to arbitration beyond what is provided for in the agreement.
Our decision in Mastrobuono v. Shearson Lehman Hutton, Inc., 514 U. S. 52 (1995), is not inconsistent with this position. In Mastrobuono, we reiterated that clear contractual language governs our interpretation of arbitration agreements, but because the choice-of-law provision in that case was ambiguous, we read the agreement to favor arbitration under the FAA rules. Id., at 62. While we distinguished Volt on the ground
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