Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-1272_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 7

Cite as:  586 U. S. ____ (2019) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

tion enables courts to block frivolous attempts to transfer
disputes from the court system to arbitration. 

We  conclude  that  the  “wholly  groundless”  exception 
is  inconsistent  with  the  text  of  the  Act  and  with  our 
precedent.

We  must  interpret  the  Act  as  written,  and  the  Act  in
turn  requires  that  we  interpret  the  contract  as  written. 
When  the  parties’  contract  delegates  the  arbitrability
question  to  an  arbitrator,  a  court  may  not  override  the 
In  those  circumstances,  a  court  possesses  no
contract. 
power to decide the arbitrability issue.  That is true even if 
the  court  thinks  that  the  argument  that  the  arbitration 
agreement  applies  to  a  particular  dispute  is  wholly 
groundless.

That conclusion follows not only from the text of the Act 
but  also  from  precedent.  We  have  held  that  a  court  may 
not  “rule  on  the  potential  merits of  the  underlying”  claim 
that  is  assigned  by  contract  to  an  arbitrator,  “even  if  it 
appears to the court to be frivolous.”  AT&T Technologies, 
Inc.  v.  Communications  Workers,  475  U. S.  643,  649–650 
(1986).  A  court  has  “ ‘no  business  weighing  the  merits  of 
the  grievance’ ”  because  the  “ ‘agreement  is  to  submit  all 
grievances to arbitration, not merely those which the court
will deem meritorious.’ ”  Id., at 650 (quoting Steelworkers 
v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U. S. 564, 568 (1960)).

That  AT&T  Technologies  principle  applies  with  equal
force to the threshold issue of arbitrability.  Just as a court 
may  not  decide  a  merits  question  that  the  parties  have
delegated  to  an  arbitrator,  a  court  may  not  decide  an 
arbitrability  question  that  the  parties  have  delegated  to 
an arbitrator. 

In  an  attempt  to  overcome  the  statutory  text  and  this 
Court’s  cases,  Archer  and  White  advances  four  main  ar-
guments.  None is persuasive. 

First, Archer and White points to §§3 and 4 of the Fed-
eral Arbitration Act.  Section 3 provides that a court must