US Supreme Court Decision In Re AT&T Mobility LLC v Concepcion

Earlier this year, we published a bulletin on the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Seidel v TELUS Communications.¹ In that case, the Court considered the relationship between arbitration and class actions in the context of consumer protection law in British Columbia. The Court concluded, by a 5-4 majority, that claims under the BC Consumer Protection Act could not be waived by an arbitration clause, noting, among other things, that "private arbitral justice, because of its contractual origins, is necessarily limited."

A mere three months later, the United States Supreme Court was asked to consider similar issues in Re AT&T Mobility LLC v Concepcion.² In that case, the Court concluded, also by a 5-4 majority, that a California state rule deeming arbitration clauses which preclude collective proceedings to be unconscionable was pre-empted by the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).