In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upholds employer-employee arbitration agreements that provide for individual proceedings.

In an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, it says the text of the federal Arbitration Act is clear and the National Labor Relations Board wrongly found a way to avoid it. Justice Ginsburg writes for the dissenters (joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan). As SCOTUSblog excerpts from the dissenting opinion:

"It is the result," she says, "of take-it-or-leave-it labor contracts harking back to the type called 'yellow dog,' and of the readiness of this Court to enforce those unbargained-for agreements. The [Federal Arbitration Act] demands no such suppression for the right of workers to take concerted action for their 'mutual aid or protection.'"

Concern of dissent is that individual claims tend to be small, so that it's not necessarily worth the expense to pursue individually, but now they can't pursue together either.

Justice Ginsburg is now reading from her dissenting opinion. This is a relatively rare and significant move.

This is a big win for management — Epic Systems, Inc. v. Lewis.

ADDED: I'll excerpt this from the majority opinion:

[The employees] don’t suggest that their arbitration agreements were extracted, say, by an act of fraud or duress or in some other unconscionable way that would render any contract unenforceable. Instead, they object to their agreements precisely because they require individualized arbitration proceedings instead of class or collective ones. And by attacking (only) the individualized nature of the arbitration proceedings, the employees’ argument seeks to interfere with one of arbitration’s fundamental attributes.

"I am being forced to go before a court run by a religion I no longer believe in."

"How could that happen?"

The answer, of course, is that you entered into a contract in which you agreed to resolve disputes by that method.

"Last week, Wikipedia’s highest court, the Arbitration Committee, composed of 12 elected volunteers who serve one- or two-year terms, handed down a decision in a controversial case..."

"... having to do with the site’s self-formed Gender Gap Task Force, the goal of which is to increase female participation on Wikipedia from its current 10 percent to 25 percent by the end of next year."

Live-blogging the Supreme Court opinions.

Possible excitement this morning. I'm hanging out here, waiting for the latest news.

UPDATE 1: The first case is Descamps: "The modified categorical approach does not apply to statutes that contain a single indivisible set of elements." Kagan, the least senior Justice, wrote the opinion. "In Plain English, it is now harder for the government to use the facts of a prior conviction to enhance a federal criminal sentence." This case has 1 dissenter: Alito.

UPDATE 2: Here's the PDF of the Descamps opinion. From the Alito dissent:

Suppose that a defendant in Massachusetts was charged with breaking into a structure like the Lozman floating home. In order to convict, would it be necessary for the jury to agree whether this structure was a “building” or a “vessel”? If some jurors insisted it was a building and others were convinced it was a vessel, would the jury be hung? The Court’s answer is “yes.” According to the Court, if a defendant had been charged with burglarizing the Lozman floating home and this Court had been sitting as the jury, the defendant would have escaped conviction for burglary, no matter how strong the evidence, because the “jury” could not agree on whether he burglarized a building or a vessel.

This is not unlike the question of Alito and the Phillie Phanatic's glove that we were bandying around earlier this morning.

UPDATE 3: The second case of the day is American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant: "The Federal Arbitration Act enforces a class action arbitration waiver; cannot defeat the waiver on the ground that individual arbitration is too expensive." It's 5-3 and written by Scalia, who is the most senior Justice, other than the Chief, so only more Scalia opinions or opinions by the Chief remain to be announced today.

UPDATE 4: Presumably, no Fisher (affirmative action) case today, since we think we know that Kennedy has that opinion, and he's junior to Scalia.

UPDATE 5: The next case is written by the Chief: Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, Inc. "The Court holds that the policy violates the First Amendment by compelling affirmation of a belief outside the scope of the program." The federal law in question required organizations to have a policy against prostitution and sex trafficking to receive funding for anti-AIDS programs.

UPDATE 6: Excitement time over. Take a deep breath. No same-sex marriage. No affirmative action. No Voting Rights Act. These will all need to wait until next week. Monday will be nerve-wracking. 

UPDATE 7: Here's the PDF of the AID case. Scalia and Thomas dissent, so I will take a look at that... in a new post.

"Meet Jeff Chiesa."

"Governor Christie’s U.S. Senate Appointee Has Spent More Than A Decade Fighting For And Defending The People Of New Jersey."

A press release received just now in the email:

"Tommy [Thompson] was beside himself that [Scott] Walker was so dogmatic."

"We had lots of conversations about this — about how it was going to do nothing but cause chaos, and it was bad for the state. Businesses aren't going to move here in the middle of all this conflict."

A Democratic Wisconsin state senator talks to The Progressive's Ruth Coniff about his purported conversations last winter with Tommy Thompson about Scott Walker.

"After a certain point, Walker quit taking Tommy's phone calls... I think Tommy was giving him advice he didn't want to hear."

Democratic State Senator Bob Jauch says that during the crisis, after he and 13 other state Democrats had fled the state to stall a vote on the collective bargaining issue, he spoke with former officials in Tommy Thompson's administration who said Thompson was trying to persuade Walker to reach a deal. "I heard it from three different people who talked to him," says Jauch....

"I said, 'Tommy, you and I could have solved this whole thing over a cup of coffee.'" Jauch says. "Tommy put his hands on my shoulders and said, 'Bob, it would have been a pot of coffee, but absolutely we could have solved it.' " ...

"Tommy Thompson spent his career unifying Wisconsin," Jauch adds. "It has to be stressful for him to watch Governor Walker divide the state."

Hmmm. Jauch is a Democrat, and Tommy Thompson is running for for office right now (trying to get the U.S. Senate seat Herb Kohl is vacating). Thompson — as the linked article notes — is getting criticized from the right for being too moderate. It doesn't help Thompson's candidacy to have Democrats slathering him with love. Read the whole article. There are more quotes from Democrats who think Thompson is just dreamy compared to Walker.

By the way, if Walker is ousted in a recall — highly unlikely, in my view — I'd like to see him vie for that Herb Kohl Senate seat.

And look: Scott Walker was proclaimed "Governor of the Year" by Governors Journal.

"People are free to discriminate based on sex, religion, race, and so on in their wills..."

... but what if, instead of specifying how much specific individuals get, the will says to divide things up according to religious law? Is the court supposed to figure out what the religious law requires? Eugene Volokh has a very interesting post about a case in which the court decided that the sons should get twice as much as the daughters because the will said to follow "Islamic Laws and Sharia." Looking at a Supreme Court case from 1968, Volokh thinks the Establishment Clause requires the court to refuse to make such a religious decision. Volokh also thinks "this rule is right..."

...  even though it does make things difficult for religious people who want the religious terms of their wills and contracts enforced. The alternative, after all, is for courts to take sides in deciding which rival religious view — say, which understanding of Islamic law — is right and which is wrong...

Fortunately, religious observers who want their disputes settled according to religious law generally have a simple solution: They can provide for arbitration by some religious tribunal that they choose, and courts will generally then enforce the result of that arbitration. Civil courts will no longer be called to decide what Islamic/Jewish/etc. law “really” requires, yet religious believers can have their disputes adjudicated under religious principles.

ADDED: Here's a hypothetical with religion taken out of it. A man has 2 children by 2 different women, who are of 2 different races. The will says that his estate shall go to the child who is racially superior.

Ohio crushes public-employee unions.

The NYT reports:

The bill would bar public employees from striking and would prohibit binding arbitration for police officers and firefighters. It would allow bargaining over wages, but not health coverage and pensions and would allow public-employee unions to bargain only when the public employer chose to do so....

The bill would allow public employees who are covered by union contracts but who choose not to belong to the union to opt out of paying union dues or fees. The bill would also bar any governmental unit in Ohio from deducting any part of a worker’s paycheck and giving it to the union for political activities unless the worker gave express permission....

"We, the miners of Waldo and Althouse in Oregon Territory, being in convention assembled..."

"... for the purpose of making rules to regulate our rights as miners, do hereby on the first day of April, 1852, ordain and adopt the following rules and regulations to govern this camp":

That 50 cubic yards shall constitute a claim on the bed of the creek extending to high water on each side.

That 40 feet shall constitute a bank or bar claim on the face extending back to the hill or mountain.

That all claims not worked when workable, after five days, be forfeited or jumpable.

That all disputes arising from mining claims shall be settled by arbitration, and the decision shall be final.