Court Opinion

ID: 9493532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:10:47.139328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:53.460727
License: Public Domain

COLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
On the merits of Haskins’s argument, I believe that the proper analysis of this case is found in the First Circuit’s opinion in Rosenberg v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 170 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.1999), and that requiring compulsory arbitration of Haskins’s civil rights claims is not “appropriate,” within the meaning of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (“CRA”). As in Rosenberg, “[t]he agreement did not state that [the plaintiff] agreed to arbitrate all disputes, or even any dispute. The agreement only required [the plaintiff] to arbitrate any dispute that the [registering organization’s] rules, constitution, or bylaws ... required to be arbitrated.” Rosenberg, 170 F.3d at 18. The U-4 agreement was signed by Haskins. The U-4 was also signed by a Prudential representative who attested that Haskins was *242familiar with the rules of the organization referred to in the U-4 agreement. In fact, Haskins was neither given a copy of these rules, nor were these rules explained to him. This lack of an informed waiver of his judicial forum for a civil rights claim, coupled with the allegedly false attestation by Prudential’s representative, lead me to believe that this narrow situation is one in which enforcement of a compelled arbitration clause waiving Haskins’s judicial forum for his employment discrimination claim is inappropriate under the CRA.
In addition, I believe the majority’s analysis makes two critical missteps. First, the majority’s contract law analysis— which it states is the holding of its opinion — is consistent with Rosenberg. 'The majority states that it adopts the contract law holding contained in Beauchamp v. Great West Life Assurance Co., 918 F.Supp. 1091 (E.D.Mich.1996). In Beauchamp, the plaintiff, who alleged “merely that she [did] not remember reading [the U-4] language,” 918 F.Supp. at 1098-99, argued that she had to “knowingly relinquish her rights to a judicial forum for employment discrimination claims when she signed the U-4 form,” id. at 1095; an admittedly high standard which the Rosenberg court declined to adopt as well. Further, in Rosenberg, the court rejected the plaintiffs argument that the arbitration agreement was an unenforceable contract of adhesion or that the facts alleged supported other relief under contract law doctrines such as fraud or oppressive conduct. See Rosenberg, 170 F.3d at 17. Nor do the two Michigan state cases cited within Beauchamp—Scholz v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 437 Mich. 83, 468 N.W.2d 845 (1991) and Sponseller v. Kimball, 246 Mich. 255, 224 N.W. 359 (1929) — provide more support for the majority’s analysis of Has-kins's case.1 In both of those cases, had the plaintiffs read the documents provided to them, they would have clearly been informed of the facts that they protested in their suit. For example, in Scholz, the case of more recent vintage, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected the argument of a plaintiff, who was fired for her refusal to work on Sundays, that she be able to enforce a prior oral agreement not to work on Sundays, even after she signed a subsequent written agreement that she was an at-will employee. See Scholz, 468 N.W.2d at 846. Haskins, however, received no like opportunity to inform himself of the claims which were to be subjected to compelled arbitration. See Rosenberg, 170 F.3d at 18 (“Had the U-4 provided for arbitration of all disputes, or given explicit notice that employment disputes were subject to arbitration, we would have had little difficulty in finding that Rosenberg had agreed to arbitrate her employment discrimination claims within the meaning of the 1991 CRA.”).
Second, the majority’s opinion reads the “appropriate” language of the CRA to be superfluous; a clearly disfavored method of statutory interpretation. “Judges should hesitate ... to treat [as surplusage] statutory terms in any setting.... ” Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 140-141, 114 S.Ct. 655, 126 L.Ed.2d 615 (1994); see also United States v. Alaska, 521 U.S. 1, 59, 117 S.Ct. 1888, 138 L.Ed.2d 231 (1997) (“The Court will avoid an interpretation of a statute that ‘renders some words altogether redundant.’ ”) (quoting Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 574, 115 S.Ct. 1061, 131 L.Ed.2d 1 (1995)). *243Congress specifically legislated, in Section 118 of the CRA, that arbitration of civil rights claims is encouraged “[w]here appropriate and to the extent authorized by law.” As the Rosenberg court noted, “[a]t a minimum the words ‘to the extent authorized by law’ must mean that arbitration agreements that are unenforceable under the FAA are also unenforceable when applied to claims under Title VII and the ADEA. Under the FAA, arbitration agreements are enforceable ‘save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.’ ” Rosenberg, 170 F.3d at 19. As to the first part of the CRA clause at issue, the majority states that it declines “to require a heightened standard that arbitration be ‘appropriate’ without a clear Congressional requirement to do so,” and decides the case on contract law grounds.2 I can think of no clearer signal from Congress than statutory language' coupled with relevant legislative history, see, e.g. 137 Cong. Rec. S15,472 — 78 (daily ed. Oct. 30, 1991) (statement of Sen. Dole) (stating that the arbitration provision encourages arbitration, but “where the parties knowingly and voluntarily elect to use these methods”), to direct the courts to faithfully interpret this provision of the CRA. Further, the Supreme Com’t has already indicated that the identical statutory language, in a provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990(ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12212, has meaning. See Wright v. Universal Maritime Serv. Corp., 525 U.S. 70, 82 n. 2, 119 S.Ct. 391, 142 L.Ed.2d 361 (1998) (“Our conclusion that a union waiver of employee rights to a federal judicial forum for employment discrimination claims must be clear and unmistakable means that, absent a clear waiver, it is not ‘appropriate,’ within the meaning of this provision of the ADA, to find an agreement to arbitrate.”). The majority’s opinion instead renders the statutory language meaningless. Reasonable jurists can, and will, dispute whether any particular facts or category of cases are “appropriate” for an agreement to arbitrate; I do not agree, however, that we have the power to “find[ ] it would be unwise” to apply the statutory language.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. Under the FAA, we are to “apply ordinary state-law principles that govern the formation of contracts. ” First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 944, 115 S.Ct. 1920, 131 L.Ed.2d 985 (1995). State law resolves questions "concerning the validity, revocability, or enforceability of contracts generally” Perry v. Thomas, 482 U.S. 483, 492 n. 9, 107 S.Ct. 2520, 96 L.Ed.2d 426 (1987), and works together with the “body of federal substantive law of arbitrability” created by the FAA. Moses H. Cone Mem'l Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24, 103 S.Ct. 927, 74 L.Ed.2d 765 (1983). Cases under the FAA do not clearly require us to employ the contract law principles of the state in which the contract or claim arose — in Haskins’s case, Ohio — but if I were to undertake a contract analysis in this case, I would also use Ohio state law. See, e.g., First Options, 514 U.S. at 944, 115 S.Ct. 1920 (applying the law of the state, Illinois, in which the case arose).

. To the extent that the majority suggests that the dictates of the FAA, which was enacted in 1947 and was meant to put arbitration agreements generally on the same footing as other contracts, see, e.g., American Airlines, Inc. v. Louisville & Jefferson County Air Bd., 269 F.2d 811, 816 (6th Cir.1959), trumps language in the CRA, which was enacted in 1991 and specifically addressed agreements to arbitrate civil rights claims, I disagree.
The ‘‘classic judicial task of reconciling many laws enacted over time, and getting them to ‘make sense’ in combination, necessarily assumes that the implications of a statute may be altered by the implications of a later statute.” This is particularly so where the scope of the earlier statute is broad but the subsequent statutes more specifically address the topic at hand. As we recognized recently in United States v. Estate of Romani [523 U.S. 517, 118 S.Ct. 1478, 140 L.Ed.2d 710 (1998)], "a specific policy embodied in a later federal statute should control our construction of the [earlier] statute, even though it has not been expressly amended.”
Food & Drug Admin. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 120 S.Ct. 1291, 1306, 146 L.Ed.2d 121 (2000) (internal citation omitted).