Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/12pdf/12-133_19m1.pdf
Page Number: 24

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

11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

too  costly  to  bring. 
Its  rationale  applies  whenever  an 
agreement makes the vindication of federal claims impos-
sibly  expensive—whether  by  imposing  fees  or  proscribing 
cost-sharing or adopting some other device. 

That  leaves  the  three  last  sentences  in  the  majority’s
core  paragraph.    Here,  the  majority  conjures  a  special 
reason to exclude “class-action waiver[s]” from the effective-
vindication  rule’s  compass.  Ante,  at  7–8,  and  n.  4. 
Rule  23,  the  majority  notes,  became  law  only  in  1938—
decades after the Sherman Act.  The majority’s conclusion:
If  federal  law  in  the  interim  decades  did  not  eliminate  a 
plaintiff ’s  rights  under  that  Act,  then  neither  does  this 
agreement.

But that notion, first of all, rests on a false premise: that
this case is only about a class-action waiver.  See ante, at 
7,  n. 4  (confining  the  case  to  that  issue).  It  is  not,  and 
indeed  could  not  sensibly  be.  The  effective-vindication 
rule  asks  whether  an  arbitration  agreement  as  a  whole 
precludes  a  claimant  from  enforcing  federal  statutory 
rights.  No single provision is properly viewed in isolation,
because an agreement can close off one avenue to pursue a 
claim while leaving others open.  In this case, for example,
the  agreement  could  have  prohibited  class  arbitration
without  offending  the  effective-vindication  rule  if  it  had 
provided  an  alternative  mechanism  to  share,  shift,  or 
reduce  the  necessary  costs.    The  agreement’s  problem  is
that  it  bars  not  just  class  actions,  but  also  all  mecha-
nisms—many existing long before the Sherman Act, if that
matters—for  joinder  or  consolidation  of  claims,  informal 
coordination  among  individual  claimants,  or  amelioration
of arbitral expenses.  See supra, at 7.  And contrary to the 
majority’s  assertion,  the  Second  Circuit  well  understood 
that  point:  It  considered,  for  example,  whether  Italian 
Colors  could  shift  expert  expenses  to  Amex  if  its  claim 
prevailed (no) or could join with merchants bringing simi-
lar  claims  to  produce  a  common  expert  report  (no  again).