Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/565/95/
Timestamp: 2018-07-23 17:30:44
Document Index: 658240789

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679', '§1679']

CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood :: 565 U.S. 95 (2012) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 565 › CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood
CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 565 U.S. 95 (2012)
(a) Section 2 of the FAA establishes “a liberal federal policy favoring arbitration.” Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1 . It requires that courts enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms. See Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213 . That is the case even when federal statutory claims are at issue, unless the FAA’s mandate has been “overridden by a contrary congressional command.” Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220 . Pp. 2–3.
(b) The CROA provides no such command. Respondents contend that the CROA’s disclosure provision—which requires credit repair organizations to provide consumers with a statement that includes the sentence “ ‘You have a right to sue a credit repair organization that violates the [Act],’ ” 15 U. S. C. §1679c(a)—gives consumers the right to bring an action in a court of law; and that, because the CROA prohibits the waiver of “any right of the consumer under this subchapter,” §1679f(a), the arbitration agreement’s waiver of the “right” to bring a court action cannot be enforced. Respondents’ premise is flawed. The disclosure provision creates only a right for consumers to receive a specific statement describing the consumer protections that the law elsewhere provides, one of which is the right to enforce a credit repair organization’s “liab[ility]” for “fail[ure] to comply with [the Act].” §1679g(a). That provision does not override the FAA’s mandate. Its mere contemplation of judicial enforcement does not demonstrate that the Act provides consumers with a “right” to initial judicial enforcement. Pp. 3–8.
Claims alleging the violation of a statute, such as the Credit Repair Organizations Act (Act), 15 U. S. C. §1679 et seq., are generally subject to valid arbitration agreements unless Congress evinces a contrary intent in the text, history, or purpose of the statute. See Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 26 (1991) . I agree with the Court that Congress has not shown that intent here. But for the reasons stated by the dissent, I find this to be a much closer case than the majority opinion suggests.
I add one more point. The majority opinion contrasts the liability provision of the Act with other, more recently enacted statutes that expressly disallow arbitration. I do not understand the majority opinion to hold that Congress must speak so explicitly in order to convey its intent to preclude arbitration of statutory claims. We have never said as much, and on numerous occasions have held that proof of Congress’ intent may also be discovered in the history or purpose of the statute in question. See ibid. (“If such an intention exists, it will be discoverable in the text of the [statute], its legislative history, or an ‘inherent conflict’ between arbitration and the [statute’s] underlying purposes”); Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220, 227 (1987) (“If Congress did intend to limit or prohibit waiver of a judicial forum for a particular claim, such an intent ‘will be deducible from [the statute’s] text or legislative history,’ or from an inherent conflict between arbitration and the statute’s underlying pur-poses” (quoting Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614, 628 (1985) ; citation omitted)). I agree with the dissent that the statutes the majority opinion cites shed little light on the thoughts of the Congress that passed the Act. But the Act’s text is not dispositive, and respondents identify nothing in the legislative history or purpose of the Act that would tip the balance of the scale in favor of their interpretation.
Seeking damages for the alleged violations, along with attorneys’ fees, plaintiffs requested class certification. In the District Court and Court of Appeals, they successfully resisted CompuCredit’s motion to compel arbitration pursuant to a form contract that barred class proceedings. [ 1 ] This Court, however, interprets the CROA to permit CompuCredit’s demand that plaintiffs proceed, if at all, before an arbitrator. [ 2 ] I read the governing statute differently.
The Act renders void and unenforceable “[a]ny waiver by any consumer of any protection provided by or any right of the consumer under this subchapter.” §1679f (emphasis added). [ 3 ] The rights listed in §1679c(a) rendered nonwaiv- able by §1679f are the “right to sue” and the “right to cancel [a] contract . . . for any reason within 3 business days from the date [the consumer] signed it.” [ 4 ]
The Court is quite right in recognizing that consumers “have the legal right, enforceable in court, to recover damages from credit repair organizations that violate the CROA.” Ibid. But the Court is quite wrong, as I see it, to characterize as merely “imprecise,” ibid., Congress’ failure to include the caveat that access to court may be conditioned upon an anterior arbitration. The “right to sue” may well be “a colloquial method of communicating to consumers.” See ibid. But it surely is not colloquially understood by recipients of the required disclosures as the right, not to adjudicate in court, but only to seek, or defend against, court enforcement of an award rendered by the arbitrator chosen by the credit repair organization. Few, if any, credit repair customers would equate the “right to sue,” §1679c(a), with the extremely limited judicial review given to an arbitrator’s award, see, e.g., Hall Street Associates, L. L. C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U. S. 576 –589 (2008).
The Court discounts the references to “action,” “class action,” and “court” in §1679g, the provision that “create[s]” the consumers’ claim for relief. See ante, at 5. Despite similar statutory language, the Court observes, we have enforced arbitration agreements to settle disputes arising under other Acts of Congress. The CROA, how- ever, is distinguished by its disclosure requirements, prime among them, the obligation imposed on the credit repair organization to inform potential customers they “have a right to sue” an organization that violates the Act. §1679c(a). Yet the Court refuses to read this language in concert with §1679g, notwithstanding our frequent acknowledgment that “a statute is to be read as a whole, since the meaning of statutory language . . . depends on context.” King v. St. Vincent’s Hospital, 502 U. S. 215, 221 (1991) (citation omitted). As just explained, I believe Congress meant what an ordinary reader of the disclosure requirement would likely comprehend: A credit repair organization that engages in deceptive practices may be sued in court.
This unfortunate result is not compelled by our precedents. The Court cites three decisions for the proposition, by now uncontroversial, that the mere existence of a stat- utory right of action does not preclude agreements to arbitrate disputes. See ante, at 5–6 (citing Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 28 (1991) ; Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220, 240 (1987) ; and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614, 637 (1985) ). As the Court acknowledges, ante, at 6, none of the statutes at issue in those cases contained a nonwaiver clause analogous to §1679f. Yet the presence of such a clause would not have affected the outcome, the Court maintains; a nonwaiver provision would not have precluded arbitration because the statutes conferred no underlying right to proceed in court.
Precisely the point: The CROA differs from the statutes we have construed in the past in just that respect. The Act does not merely create a claim for relief. It designates that claim as an action entailing a “right to sue”; mandates that consumers be informed, prior to entering any contract, of that right; and precludes the waiver of any “right” conferred by the Act. Neither Gilmer, McMahon, nor Mitsubishi construed a statute of a similar order. [ 5 ]
The Court’s final point is that, elsewhere, Congress has spoken with particular clarity in guaranteeing a judicial forum and proscribing arbitration, but here, it did not do so. The two statutes the Court cites as exemplary postdate the CROA’s enactment by 14 and 6 years, respectively. (A third merely delegates regulatory authority over certain arbitration agreements.) See ante, at 9. Notably, these recent statutes were framed following a string of this Court’s decisions compelling arbitration pursuant to contractual stipulations. [ 6 ] Our decisions have increasingly alerted Congress to the utility of drafting antiwaiver prescriptions with meticulous care. But the Congress that drafted the CROA was not similarly stimulated, and we cannot fairly assess that enactment in the light of subsequent legislative responses to developments unknown to the CROA’s drafters. Cf. United States v. Price, 361 U. S. 304, 313 (1960) (“[T]he views of a subsequent Congress form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one.”).
Beyond question, the Federal Arbitration Act, “standing alone,” favors the enforcement of arbitration agreements. McMahon, 482 U. S., at 226. To depart from that rule, however, Congress need not employ “magic words.” See Tr. of Oral Arg. 6. In determining whether the Arbitration Act’s general rule has been displaced by another statutory prescription, it remains our responsibility to examine carefully “the text of the [statute], its legislative history,” and Congress’ “underlying purposes.” Gilmer, 500 U. S., at 26 (citing McMahon, 482 U. S., at 227). See also 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U. S. 247, 258 (2009) (arbitration agreements will be enforced “unless Congress itself has evinced an intention to preclude a waiver of judicial remedies for the statutory rights at issue” (quoting Gilmer, 500 U. S., at 26, in turn quoting Mitsubishi, 473 U. S., at 628)). No “unmistakably clear” statement is necessary to proscribe the arbitration clause CompuCredit seeks to enforce.
3 Section 1679f(a), omitted from the Court’s statutory appendix, ante, at 11–14, provides in full: “Any waiver by any consumer of any protection provided by or any right of the consumer under this subchapter— “(1) shall be treated as void; and “(2) may not be enforced by any Federal or State court or any otherperson.”
CompuCredit Corporation, et al.
Wanda Greenwood, et al.
565 U.S. 95