Jump Trading, LLC v. Nick Patterson, et al.

Modern arbitration agreements often contain a socalled delegation clause providing that gateway arbitrability questions—such as whether a particular dispute falls within the scope of the arbitration agreement—are delegated to the arbitrator to decide. This Court ruled unanimously in Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. 63 (2019) that courts possess no power to rule on arbitrability when an agreement contains a clear delegation clause. However, in a 5-to-4 split, the circuit courts of appeals remain sharply divided on the question of whether the arbitrator or the court should decide gateway arbitrability questions involving nonsignatories to an arbitration agreement even when there is a clear delegation clause. This uncertainty creates significant practical problems for courts and litigants in the substantial number of disputes involving nonsignatories to arbitration agreements, undermining the predictability and efficiency that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) was designed to promote. This petition seeks a resolution to this disagreement among the circuits by posing the following question for the Court: Where an arbitration agreement contains a provision delegating to the arbitrator gateway questions of arbitrability, must a court leave for the arbitrator to decide the issue of whether a nonsignatory to that agreement can compel a signatory to arbitrate a dispute between them?