AT&T Mobility LLC, et al. v. Steven McArdle

California law authorizes plaintiffs asserting a claim under the State’s consumer-protection laws to seek “public injunctive relief”—which it defines as relief that “prevent[s] further harm to the public at large” and not “[r]elief that has the primary purpose or effect of redressing or preventing injury to an individual plaintiff.” McGill v. Citibank, N.A., 393 P.3d 85, 90 (Cal. 2017) (quotation marks omitted). The California Supreme Court has held that “a provision in a predispute arbitration agreement that waives the right to seek this statutory remedy in any forum * * * is contrary to California public policy and is thus unenforceable under California law.” Id. at 87. Notwithstanding this Court’s repeated holdings that “courts may not allow a contract defense to reshape traditional individualized arbitration” (Epic Sys. Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612, 1623 (2018))— and the very close resemblance between California’s public injunctive relief and class-wide injunctive relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2)—the California Supreme Court in McGill and the Ninth Circuit in this case and two companion cases ruled that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) does not preempt California’s anti-waiver rule. The question presented is whether California’s public-policy rule conditioning the enforceability of arbitration agreements on acquiescence to public-injunction proceedings is preempted by the FAA.