Judges, and not arbitrators, should decide questions relating to the enforceability of a class action waiver in an arbitration clause because such questions present issues of “arbitrability” that are properly decided by courts, an en banc panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
“An unconscionability challenge to the provisions of an arbitration agreement is a question of arbitrability that is presumptively for the court, not the arbitrator, to decide,” U.S. Circuit Judge Julio M. Fuentes wrote for a six-judge majority in Puleo v. Chase Bank USA.
