532 U.S. 105 (2001)
In October 1995, Saint Clair Adams applied for a job at Circuit City Stores, Inc., a national retailer of consumer electronics.1 Adams signed an employment application that included a provision stating he would settle any and all previously unasserted claims, disputes or controversies arising out of or relating to his application or candidacy for employment, employment and/or cessation of employment with Circuit City exclusively by final and binding arbitration before a neutral Arbitrator, with examples including claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended, the Americans with Disabilities Act, contract law, and tort law.2 Adams was hired as a sales counselor in Circuit City's store in Santa Rosa, California.3
Two years later Adams filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against Circuit City in California state court asserting claims under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act and other claims based on general tort theories under California law.4 Circuit City filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California seeking to enjoin the state-court action and to compel arbitration of Adams's claims pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act.5 The district court entered an order concluding that Adams was obligated by the arbitration agreement to submit his claims to binding arbitration.6
Adams appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.7 While the appeal was pending the Ninth Circuit ruled in an unrelated case that the Federal Arbitration Act does not apply to contracts of employment.8 Following that ruling the Ninth Circuit held in Adams's case that the arbitration agreement was contained in a contract of employment and therefore was not subject to the Federal Arbitration Act.9
Circuit City petitioned the Supreme Court for review noting that the Ninth Circuit's conclusion that all employment contracts are excluded from the Federal Arbitration Act conflicts with every other Court of Appeals to have addressed the question.10 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the issue.11
Whether Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act exempts from the Act's coverage all contracts of employment or only contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, and other transportation workers?12
The exemption clause in Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act provides that the Act shall not apply to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce, and this residual clause is interpreted using ejusdem generis to cover only transportation workers similar to seamen and railroad employees.13
No. The arbitration agreement signed by Adams does not fall within the Section 1 exemption.1415 Adams worked as a sales counselor at a retail electronics store. He was not a transportation worker actually engaged in the movement of goods in interstate commerce.16 The residual phrase in Section 1 is controlled by the enumerated categories of seamen and railroad employees.17 This leads to the conclusion that only contracts of employment of transportation workers are exempt from the Act.18
Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act exempts only contracts of employment of transportation workers from the Act's coverage.19
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, And Souter (as To Parts Ii And Iii)
Justice Stevens stated that, if he were writing on a clean slate, there would be good reason to conclude that neither the phrase maritime transaction nor the phrase contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce was intended to encompass employment contracts.20 The history of the Act makes clear that the FAA was a response to the refusal of courts to enforce commercial arbitration agreements.21
The amendment to Section 1 was an uncontroversial provision that merely confirmed that no one interested in the enactment of the FAA ever intended or expected that Section 2 would apply to employment contracts.22 The Court's reading of Section 2 to include contracts of employment is compounded by its cramped interpretation of the exclusion inserted into Section 1.23
Joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, And Breyer
Justice Souter argued that the question is whether a similarly general phrase in the Section 1 exemption should receive a correspondingly evolutionary reading.24 The statute is entitled to a coherent reading as a whole by treating the exemption for employment contracts as keeping pace with the expanded understanding of the commerce power generally.25 There are good reasons not to apply ejusdem generis here because it would impute something very odd to the working of the congressional brain.26
Congress took care to bar application of the Act to the class of employment contracts it most obviously had authority to legislate about in 1925.27 It did so while covering only employees engaged in less obvious ways.28