Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1573_8p6h.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

18 

VIKING RIVER CRUISES, INC. v. MORIANA 

Opinion of the Court 

have been raised by the State in an enforcement proceed-
ing.  Iskanian’s secondary rule prohibits parties from con-
tracting  around  this  joinder  device  because  it  invalidates 
agreements to arbitrate only “individual PAGA claims for 
Labor Code violations that an employee suffered,” 59 Cal. 
4th, at 383, 327 P. 3d, at 149. 

This prohibition on contractual division of PAGA actions 
into constituent claims unduly circumscribes the freedom of 
parties to determine “the issues subject to arbitration” and 
“the  rules  by  which  they  will  arbitrate,” Lamps  Plus,  587 
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7), and does so in a way that vio-
lates the fundamental principle that “arbitration is a mat-
ter of consent,” Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 684.  The most 
basic corollary of the principle that arbitration is a matter 
of  consent  is  that  “a  party  can  be  forced  to  arbitrate  only 
those issues it specifically has agreed to submit to arbitra-
tion,”  First  Options  of  Chicago,  Inc.  v.  Kaplan,  514  U. S. 
938, 945 (1995).  This means that parties cannot be coerced 
into arbitrating a claim, issue, or dispute “absent an affirm-
ative ‘contractual basis for concluding that the party agreed 
to do so.’ ”  Lamps Plus, 587 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (quot-
ing  Stolt-Nielsen,  559  U. S.,  at  684);  see  also  Concepcion, 
563 U. S., at 347–348. 

For that reason, state law cannot condition the enforcea-
bility  of  an  arbitration  agreement  on  the  availability  of  a 
procedural mechanism that would permit a party to expand
the scope of the arbitration by introducing claims that the 
parties  did  not  jointly  agree  to  arbitrate.    Rules  of  claim 
joinder can function in precisely that way.  Modern civil pro-
cedure  dispenses  with  the  formalities  of  the  common-law 
approach  to  claim  joinder  in  favor  of  almost-unqualified 
joinder.  Wright & Miller §1581.  Federal Rule of Civil Pro-
cedure 18(a), which permits a party to “join, as independent 
or alternative claims, as many claims as it has against an 
opposing party,” is typical of the modern approach.  But the 
FAA  licenses  contracting  parties  to  depart  from  standard