TAMKO Building Products, Inc. v. Daniel Williams, et al.

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) “requires courts to place arbitration agreements ‘on equal footing with all other contracts.’” Kindred Nursing Ctrs. Ltd. P’ship v. Clark, 137 S. Ct. 1421, 1424 (2017). Pursuant to that principle, courts may not refuse to enforce arbitration agreements on the basis of rules that “apply only to arbitration or that derive their meaning from the fact that an agreement to arbitrate is at issue.” Id. at 1426. In the decision below, the Oklahoma Supreme Court refused to enforce an arbitration agreement under ordinary principles of Oklahoma agency law because “[t]he Oklahoma Constitution preserves the right to trial by jury.” App.9. That decision to apply a heightened standard to the waiver of a jury-trial right not only plainly flouts the FAA’s equal-footing principle and this Court’s precedent, but conflicts with decisions from multiple federal courts that have examined the same arbitration agreement in materially identical factual and legal circumstances. It also perpetuates the judicial hostility to arbitration that the FAA sought to eradicate and has far-reaching practical consequences. The question presented is: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act permits state courts to craft state principles of agency law that uniquely disfavor arbitration (in the guise of uniquely protecting jury-trial rights) and use those principles to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements.