Opinion ID: 3005108
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Severability of the PAGA Waiver

Text: Sakkab has not argued that the PAGA waiver contained in the arbitration agreement rendered the entire arbitration agreement void. Nor has he disputed that he is required to arbitrate the four non-PAGA claims in the FAC. It is therefore clear that the non-PAGA claims in the FAC must be arbitrated. We have held that the waiver of Sakkab’s representative PAGA claims may not be enforced. It is unclear, however, whether the parties have agreed to arbitrate such surviving claims or whether they must be litigated instead.12 Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s order dismissing the FAC, and return the issue to the district court and the parties to decide in the first instance where Sakkab’s representative PAGA claims should be resolved, and to 12 We note that the dispute resolution agreement provides that Luxottica “expressly does not agree to arbitrate any claim on a . . . representative basis.” 30 SAKKAB V. LUXOTTICA RETAIL N. AM. conduct such other proceedings as are consistent with this opinion. REVERSED and REMANDED. N.R. SMITH, dissenting: In 1925, “Congress enacted the [Federal Arbitration Act] in response to widespread judicial hostility to arbitration.” Am. Express Co. v. Italian Colors Rest., 133 S. Ct. 2304, 2308–09 (2013). Despite ninety years of Supreme Court precedent invalidating state laws deemed hostile to arbitration, the majority today displays this same “judicial hostility” to arbitration agreements. Our court employed the same “judicial hostility” in Laster v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 584 F.3d 849 (9th Cir. 2009), rev’d sub nom. AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011), for which we were subsequently reversed. In this case, rather than upholding the purposes of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), the majority upholds a “judicially created” state rule that prevents parties to an arbitration agreement from agreeing that their future arbitration will address individual claims arising between one employee and one employer. To conclude that the state rule (created by Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 327 P.3d 129 (Cal. 2014)) does not frustrate the purposes of the FAA, the majority ignores the basic precepts enunciated in Concepcion. Because the majority should have applied Concepcion and deferred to the FAA’s “liberal federal policy favoring arbitration,” Moses H. Cone Mem’l Hosp. v. SAKKAB V. LUXOTTICA RETAIL N. AM. 31 Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24 (1983), rather than circumventing it, I must dissent.