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Page Number: 8

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HENRY SCHEIN, INC. v. ARCHER & WHITE SALES, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

stay  litigation  “upon  being  satisfied  that  the  issue”  is 
“referable  to  arbitration”  under  the  “agreement.”    Section 
4  says  that  a  court,  in  response  to  a  motion  by  an  ag-
grieved  party,  must  compel  arbitration  “in  accordance 
with the terms of the agreement” when the court is “satis-
fied  that  the  making  of  the  agreement  for  arbitration  or
the failure to comply therewith is not in issue.”

Archer  and  White  interprets  those  provisions  to  mean, 
in  essence,  that  a  court  must  always  resolve  questions  of 
arbitrability and that an arbitrator never may do so.  But 
that ship has sailed.  This Court has consistently held that
parties  may  delegate  threshold  arbitrability  questions  to 
the arbitrator, so long as the parties’ agreement does so by
“clear  and  unmistakable”  evidence.  First  Options,  514 
U. S., at 944 (alterations omitted); see also Rent-A-Center, 
561  U. S.,  at  69,  n.  1.    To  be  sure,  before  referring  a  dis-
pute  to  an  arbitrator,  the  court  determines  whether  a 
valid arbitration agreement exists.  See 9 U. S. C. §2.  But 
if a valid agreement exists, and if the agreement delegates
the  arbitrability  issue  to  an  arbitrator,  a  court  may  not 
decide the arbitrability issue.
  Second,  Archer  and  White  cites  §10  of  the  Act,  which 
provides  for  back-end  judicial  review  of  an  arbitrator’s 
decision  if  an  arbitrator  has  “exceeded”  his  or  her  “pow-
ers.”  §10(a)(4).  According to Archer and White, if a court
at the back end can say that the underlying issue was not 
arbitrable, the court at the front end should also be able to 
say  that  the  underlying  issue  is  not  arbitrable.    The  dis-
positive  answer  to  Archer  and  White’s  §10  argument  is
that Congress designed the Act in a specific way, and it is
not  our  proper  role  to  redesign  the  statute.    Archer  and 
White’s §10 argument would mean, moreover, that courts
presumably  also  should  decide  frivolous  merits  questions
that  have  been  delegated  to  an  arbitrator.  Yet  we  have 
already  rejected  that  argument:  When  the  parties’  con-
tract  assigns  a  matter  to  arbitration,  a  court  may  not