Page:Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Frank Varela.pdf/44

Rh of arbitration agreements unless that law discriminates against arbitration; the anti-drafter default rule is subject to no such objection; the rule therefore compels this Court to hold that the agreement here authorizes class arbitration. That the majority thinks the contract, as so read, seriously disadvantages Lamps Plus, see ante, at 7–8, is of no moment (any more than if state law had instead construed the contract to produce adverse consequences for Varela). The FAA was enacted to protect against judicial hostility toward arbitration agreements. See supra, at 6. But the Act provides no warrant for courts to disregard neutral state law in service of ensuring that those agreements give defendants the best terms possible. Or said otherwise: Nothing in the FAA shields a contracting party, operating against the backdrop of impartial state law, from the consequences of its own drafting decisions. How, then, could the majority go so wrong?

Stolt-Nielsen offers the majority no excuse: Far from “control[ling]” this case, ante, at 8, that decision addressed a different situation—and explicitly reserved decision of the question here. In Stolt-Nielsen, the contracting parties entered into a formal stipulation that “they had not reached any agreement on the issue of class arbitration.” 559 U. S., at 673. The case thus involved not the mere absence of express language about class arbitration, but a joint avowal that the parties had never resolved the issue. Facing that oddity, an arbitral panel compelled class arbitration based solely on its “own conception of sound policy.” Id., at 675; see id., at 676 (“[T]he panel did [nothing] other than impose its own policy preference”). This Court rejected the panel’s decision for that reason, holding that a party need not “submit to class arbitration unless there is a contractual basis for concluding that the party agreed to do so.” Id., at 684. But the Court went no further. In particular, it did not resolve cases like this one, where a neutral interpretive rule (even if not an express