Page:Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc..pdf/6

4 House, Inc., 866 F. 3d 1257 (CA11 2017); Douglas, 757 F. 3d, at 464 (Dennis, J., dissenting).

In 1925, Congress passed and President Coolidge signed the Federal Arbitration Act. As relevant here, the Act provides: "“A written provision in… a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter arising out of such contract… shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” 9 U. S. C. §2."

Under the Act, arbitration is a matter of contract, and courts must enforce arbitration contracts according to their terms. Rent-A-Center, 561 U. S., at 67. Applying the Act, we have held that parties may agree to have an arbitrator decide not only the merits of a particular dispute but also “ ‘gateway’ questions of ‘arbitrability,’ such as whether the parties have agreed to arbitrate or whether their agreement covers a particular controversy.” Id., at 68–69; see also First Options, 514 U. S., at 943. We have explained that an “agreement to arbitrate a gateway issue is simply an additional, antecedent agreement the party seeking arbitration asks the federal court to enforce, and the FAA operates on this additional arbitration agreement just as it does on any other.” Rent-A-Center, 561 U. S., at 70.

Even when the parties’ contract delegates the threshold arbitrability question to an arbitrator, the Fifth Circuit and some other Courts of Appeals have determined that the court rather than an arbitrator should decide the threshold arbitrability question if, under the contract, the argument for arbitration is wholly groundless. Those courts have reasoned that the “wholly groundless”