Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1573_8p6h.pdf
Page Number: 11

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

opinion,  we  will  use  “individual  PAGA  claim”  to  refer  to
claims  based  on  code  violations  suffered  by  the  plaintiff.
And we will endeavor to be clear about how we are using
the term “representative.” 

Iskanian’s  principal  rule  prohibits  waivers  of  “repre-
sentative” PAGA claims in the first sense.  That is, it pre-
vents parties from waiving representative standing to bring
PAGA claims in a judicial or arbitral forum.  But Iskanian 
also adopted a secondary rule that invalidates agreements
to separately arbitrate or litigate “individual PAGA claims 
for Labor Code violations that an employee suffered,” on the
theory that resolving victim-specific claims in separate ar-
bitrations  does  not  serve  the  deterrent  purpose  of  PAGA. 
59 Cal. 4th, at 383, 327 P. 3d, at 149; see also Kim, 9 Cal. 
5th,  at  88,  459  P. 3d,  at  1132  (noting  that  based  on  Is-
kanian, California courts have uniformly “rejected efforts to
split PAGA claims into individual and representative com-
ponents”).

In this case, Iskanian’s principal prohibition required the
lower courts to treat the representative-action waiver in the 
agreement between Moriana and Viking as invalid insofar 
as it was construed as a wholesale waiver of PAGA stand-
ing.  The agreement’s severability clause, however, allowed
enforcement  of  any  “portion”  of  the  waiver  that  remained
valid, so the agreement still would have permitted arbitra-
tion of Moriana’s individual PAGA claim even if wholesale 
enforcement  was  impossible.    But  because  California  law 
prohibits division of a PAGA action into constituent claims, 
the state courts refused to compel arbitration of that claim 
as  well.  We  granted  certiorari,  595  U. S.  ___  (2021),  and 
now reverse. 

II 
The FAA was enacted in response to judicial hostility to
arbitration.  Section  2  of  the  statute  makes  arbitration 
agreements “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon