Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1573_8p6h.pdf
Page Number: 21.0

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

Nor  does  a  rule  prohibiting  waiver  of  representative
standing declare “that a contract is unenforceable just be-
cause it requires bilateral arbitration.”  Epic Systems, 584 
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9).  Indeed, if the term “bilateral 
arbitration”  is  used  to  mean  “arbitration  in  an  individual 
capacity between precisely two parties,” a rule prohibiting 
representative-capacity  waivers  cannot  invalidate  agree-
ments to arbitrate on a “bilateral” basis.  An agreement that
explicitly provided for “arbitration on a strictly bilateral ba-
sis” would, under that definition of the term “bilateral,” cat-
egorically  exclude  representative-capacity  claims  from  its 
coverage.  Such claims, after all, necessarily involve the rep-
resentation of an absent principal, and thus cannot be arbi-
trated in a strictly bilateral proceeding.  A rule prohibiting 
waivers  of  representative  standing  would  not  invalidate 
any agreements that contracted for “bilateral arbitration”
in Viking’s sense—it would simply require parties to choose 
whether to litigate those claims or arbitrate them in a pro-
ceeding that is not bilateral in every conceivable sense.  And 
while this consequence only follows because it is impossible
to decide representative claims in an arbitration that is “bi-
lateral” in every dimension, nothing in our precedent sug-
gests  that  in  enacting  the  FAA,  Congress  intended  to  re-
quire  States  to  reshape  their  agency  law  to  ensure  that 
parties will never have to arbitrate in a proceeding that de-
viates from “bilateral arbitration” in the strictest sense.  If 
there is a conflict between California’s prohibition on PAGA
waivers and the FAA, it must derive from a different source. 

III 
We think that such a conflict between PAGA’s procedural
structure and the FAA does exist, and that it derives from 
the  statute’s  built-in  mechanism  of  claim  joinder.    As  we 
noted at the outset, that mechanism permits “aggrieved em-
ployees”  to  use  the  Labor  Code  violations  they  personally
suffered as a basis to join to the action any claims that could