SCOTUS Cert Grants on Arbitration

The Supreme Court followed up today’s decisions in the Texas abortion cases with some interesting grants of certiorari on arbitration.

Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon presents the question: “Whether workers who load or unload goods from vehicles that travel in interstate commerce, but do not physically transport such goods themselves, are interstate ‘transportation workers’ exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act.” You can find the cert-stage briefing in Southwest—and follow the merits briefs as they come in—at SCOTUSblog and at the Supreme Court website.

The Court also granted certiorari in two cases—which it proceeded to consolidate—that raise an issue regarding the relationship between 28 U.S.C. § 1782(a) and arbitration. (The Court had already granted certiorari on this issue in an earlier case, but that case was taken off the calendar back in September). The two new cases are:

ZF Automotive US, Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd., which presents the question: “Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1782(a), which permits litigants to invoke the authority of United States courts to render assistance in gathering evidence for use in ‘a foreign or international tribunal,’ encompasses private commercial arbitral tribunals, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and Sixth Circuits have held, or excludes such tribunals, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fifth, and Seventh Circuits have held.”

AlixPartners, LLC v. Fund for Protection of Investor Rights in Foreign States, which presents the question: “Whether an ad hoc arbitration to resolve a commercial dispute between two parties is a ‘foreign or international tribunal’ under 28 U.S.C. § 1782(a) when the arbitral panel does not exercise any governmental or quasi-governmental authority.”

Here are the SCOTUSblog links for ZF Automotive and AlixPartners.

And here are the Supreme Court website links for ZF Automotive and AlixPartners.