The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dec. 14, 2015 decision in DirecTV v. Imburgia follows and reaffirms the high court’s 2011 landmark decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit followed two years later Murphy v. DirecTV, Inc., 724 F. 3d 1218, 1226–1228 (2013). In Imburgia, the court held—again—that the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U. S. C. §2, preempts state laws restricting the enforceability of arbitration agreements, including attendant class action waivers; state law, no matter how denominated, must not be interpreted against arbitration agreements generally or specifically; and arbitration agreements must be interpreted and enforced “on equal footing with all other contracts.”
As a result, the ruling arguably calls into question the legal reasoning of recent California state and federal opinions invalidating class and representative action waivers in California Private Attorney General Act actions, including Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC,59 Cal.4th 348 (2014), and may cause state courts to rethink similar restrictions on the enforceability of class and representative action waivers.
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