NJCJI joined a coalition of business advocacy organizations in a letter opposing H.R. 963, the “Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act.” The so-called FAIR Act would prohibit pre-dispute arbitration agreements that require arbitration in employment, consumer, antitrust, or civil rights disputes or that interfere with the ability of individual plaintiffs to participate in joint, class, or collective actions related to those types of disputes. Effectively, the FAIR Act will ban arbitration provisions in most private contracts where they typically appear today. 

In its letter to the U.S. House of Representatives opposing the bill, the coalition highlighted the fact that arbitration helps litigants. Indeed, plaintiffs tend to prevail in arbitration, recover more money, and reap these benefits faster than they would in traditional litigation and class actions. Indeed, the only group that stands to gain from the FAIR Act are class-action lawyers, whose businesses profit from increased traditional class-action litigation. Nevertheless, H.R. 963 passed the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Read H.R. 963 here and the Coalition’s letter here