Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/12-133_19m1.pdf
Page Number: 9

Cite as:  570 U. S. ____ (2013) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

Green Tree Financial Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U. S. 79, 
90 (2000) (“It may well be that the existence of large arbi-
tration  costs  could  preclude  a  litigant  . . .  from  effectively
vindicating  her  federal  statutory  rights”).    But  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  worth  the  expense  involved  in  proving  a 
statutory  remedy  does  not  constitute  the  elimination  of
the  right  to  pursue  that  remedy.  See  681  F. 3d,  at  147 
(Jacobs,  C.  J.,  dissenting  from  denial  of  rehearing  en 
banc).3   The  class-action  waiver  merely  limits  arbitration
to the two contracting parties.  It no more eliminates those 
parties’  right  to  pursue  their  statutory  remedy  than  did
federal law before its adoption of the class action for legal 
relief  in  1938,  see  Fed.  Rule  Civ.  Proc. 23,  28  U. S. C., 
p. 864  (1938  ed.,  Supp  V);  7A  C.  Wright,  A.  Miller,  &  M. 
Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §1752, p. 18 (3d ed.
2005).  Or,  to  put  it  differently,  the  individual  suit  that 
was  considered  adequate  to  assure  “effective  vindication”
of  a  federal  right  before  adoption  of  class-action  proce-
dures  did  not  suddenly  become  “ineffective  vindication” 
upon their adoption.4 

—————— 

3 The dissent contends that a class-action waiver may deny a party’s 
right  to  pursue  statutory  remedies  in  the  same  way  as  a  clause  that
bars  a  party  from  presenting  economic  testimony.    See  post,  at  3,  9. 
That is a false comparison for several reasons: To begin with, it is not a
given that such a clause would constitute an impermissible waiver; we 
have never considered the point.  But more importantly, such a clause, 
assuming it makes vindication of the claim impossible, makes it impos-
sible not just as a class action but even as an individual claim. 

4 Who  can  disagree  with  the  dissent’s  assertion  that  “the  effective-
vindication  rule  asks  about  the  world  today,  not  the world  as  it  might
have looked when Congress passed a given statute”?  Post, at 12.  But 
time  does  not  change  the  meaning  of  effectiveness,  making  ineffective
vindication  today  what  was  effective  vindication  in  the  past.    The 
dissent also says that the agreement bars other forms of cost sharing—
existing  before  the  Sherman  Act—that  could  provide  effective  vindica-
tion.  See post, at 11–12, and n. 5.  Petitioners denied that, and that is 
not what the Court of Appeals decision under review here held.  It held 
that, because other forms of cost sharing were not economically feasible