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AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. v. ITALIAN COLORS 
RESTAURANT 
Opinion of the Court 

A  pair  of  our  cases  brings  home  the  point.    In  Gilmer, 
supra, we had no qualms in enforcing a class waiver in an
arbitration  agreement  even  though  the  federal  statute  at 
issue,  the  Age  Discrimination  in  Employment  Act,  ex-
pressly permitted collective actions.  We said that statutory 
permission  did  “ ‘not  mean  that  individual  attempts  at 
conciliation were intended to be barred.’ ”  Id., at 32.  And 
in  Vimar  Seguros  y  Reaseguros,  S.  A.  v.  M/V  Sky  Reefer, 
515 U. S. 528 (1995), we held that requiring arbitration in
a  foreign  country  was  compatible  with  the  federal  Car-
riage of Goods by Sea Act.  That legislation prohibited any 
agreement  “ ‘relieving’ ”  or  “ ‘lessening’ ”  the  liability  of  a
carrier  for  damaged  goods,  id.,  at  530,  534  (quoting  46
U. S. C. App. §1303(8) (1988 ed.))—which is close to codifi-
cation  of  an  “effective  vindication”  exception.  The  Court 
rejected the argument that the “inconvenience and costs of
proceeding”  abroad  “lessen[ed]”  the  defendants’  liability, 
stating  that  “[i]t  would  be  unwieldy  and  unsupported  by
the terms or policy of the statute to require courts to pro-
ceed case by case to tally the costs and burdens to particu-
lar  plaintiffs  in  light  of  their  means,  the  size  of  their 
claims, and the relative burden on the carrier.”  515 U. S., 
at 532, 536.  Such a “tally[ing] [of] the costs and burdens” 
is  precisely  what  the  dissent  would  impose  upon  federal
courts here. 

Truth  to  tell,  our  decision  in  AT&T  Mobility  all  but 
resolves  this  case.  There  we  invalidated  a  law  condition-
ing  enforcement  of  arbitration  on  the  availability  of  class
procedure because that law “interfere[d] with fundamental 

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(“the  only  economically  feasible  means  for  . . .  enforcing  [respondents’]  

statutory  rights  is  via  a  class  action”),  the  class-action  waiver  was
 
unenforceable.    667  F.  3d,  at  218  (emphasis  added).    (The  dissent’s
 
assertion  to  the  contrary  cites  not  the  opinion  on  appeal  here,  but  an

earlier  opinion  that  was  vacated.    See  In re  American  Express  Mer-
chants’  Litigation,  554  F. 3d  300  (CA2  2009),  vacated  and  remanded,

559 U. S. 1103 (2010).)  That is the conclusion we reject.