Page:Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Frank Varela.pdf/19

Rh

, with whom and  join, dissenting. Joining ’s dissenting opinion in full, I write separately to emphasize once again how treacherously the Court has strayed from the principle that “arbitration is a matter of consent, not coercion.” Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662, 681 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in 1925 “to enable merchants of roughly equal bargaining power to enter into binding agreements to arbitrate commercial disputes.” Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (, dissenting) (slip op., at 19) (emphasis in original). The Act was not designed to govern contracts “in which one of the parties characteristically has little bargaining power.” Prima Paint Corp. v. ''Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 395, 403, n. 9 (1967); see Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp.'', 500 U. S. 20, 42 (1991) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“I doubt that any legislator who voted for [the FAA] expected it to apply… to form contracts between parties of unequal bargaining power, or to the arbitration of disputes arising out of the employment relationship.”); Miller, Simplified Pleading, Meaningful Days in Court, and Trials on the Merits: Reflections on the Deformation of Federal Procedure, 88 N. Y. U.