Today’s post concerns a perennially hot topic: class actions.  In particular, do courts decide whether an arbitration agreement allows for class actions?  Or do arbitrators?  (Because, it turns out, there are actually some corporations who have not inserted class action waivers in their consumer contracts.)  To date, four circuit courts have held that class arbitrability is an issue that is presumably for courts (not arbitrators) to decide, even if the parties incorporate rules that generally delegate issues of arbitrability to an arbitrator (3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th).  In recent weeks, the Tenth Circuit and Eleventh Circuit disagreed.  Because the Second Circuit had also previously disagreed, there is now a 4-3 split among the circuits over whether the incorporation of AAA (or similar) rules is sufficient to authorize an arbitrator to decide whether arbitration can proceed on a class-wide basis.

In Spirit Airlines v. Maizes, 2018 WL 3866335 (11th Cir. Aug. 15, 2018), members of Spirit Airlines’ “$9 Fare Club” started a class arbitration with the AAA.  Spirit then brought an action to federal court, seeking a declaration that the arbitration clause did not authorize class arbitration.  (You may recall that the outcome of the Stolt-Nielsen and Sutter cases is that there can be no class arbitration unless the parties agreed to that process in their arbitration clause, but the language does not have to be explicit.)  The district court found that the arbitrator should determine the issue of whether a class action could proceed in arbitration.

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