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4 

AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. v. ITALIAN COLORS 

RESTAURANT 
KAGAN, J., dissenting 

where we held that claims brought under the Sherman Act 
and other federal laws are generally subject to arbitration. 
473  U. S.,  at  628.    By  agreeing  to  arbitrate  such  a  claim, 
we  explained,  “a  party  does  not  forgo  the  substantive
rights  afforded  by  the  statute;  it  only  submits  to  their
resolution  in  an  arbitral,  rather  than  a  judicial,  forum.” 
Ibid.  But crucial to our decision was a limiting principle, 
designed to safeguard federal rights: An arbitration clause 
will  be  enforced  only  “so  long  as  the  prospective  litigant 
effectively  may  vindicate  its  statutory  cause  of  action  in
the  arbitral  forum.”  Id.,  at  637.  If  an  arbitration  provi-
sion  “operated  . . .  as  a  prospective  waiver  of  a  party’s 
right  to  pursue  statutory  remedies,”  we  emphasized,  we
would  “condemn[ ]”  it.  Id.,  at  637,  n. 19.    Similarly,  we
stated  that  such  a  clause  should  be  “set[]  aside”  if  “pro-
ceedings  in  the  contractual  forum  will  be  so  gravely  diffi-
cult”  that  the  claimant  “will  for  all  practical  purposes  be
deprived of his day in court.”   Id., at 632 (internal quota-
tion marks omitted).  And in the decades since Mitsubishi, 
we have repeated its admonition time and again, instruct-
ing  courts  not  to  enforce  an  arbitration  agreement  that
effectively (even if not explicitly) forecloses a plaintiff from 
remedying  the  violation  of  a  federal  statutory  right.    See 
Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 28 
(1991);  Vimar  Seguros  y  Reaseguros,  S.  A.  v.  M/V  Sky 
Reefer, 515 U. S. 528, 540 (1995); 14 Penn Plaza, 556 U. S., 
at 266, 273–274. 

Our decision in Green Tree Financial Corp.-Ala. v. Ran-
dolph,  531  U. S.  79  (2000),  confirmed  that  this  principle 
applies when an agreement thwarts federal law by making
arbitration  prohibitively  expensive.    The  plaintiff  there
(seeking  relief  under  the  Truth  in  Lending  Act)  argued
that  an  arbitration  agreement  was  unenforceable  be- 
cause  it  “create[d]  a  risk”  that  she  would  have  to  “bear
prohibitive arbitration costs” in the form of high filing and 
administrative  fees.  Id.,  at  90  (internal  quotation  marks