Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA or Act) excludes from the Act's coverage "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." 9 U. S. C. § 1. All but one of the Courts of Appeals which have addressed the issue interpret this provision as exempting contracts of employment of transportation workers, but not other employment contracts, from the FAA's coverage. A different interpretation has been adopted by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which construes the exemption so that all contracts of employment are beyond the FAA's reach, whether or not the worker is engaged in transportation. It applied that rule to the instant case. We now decide that the better interpretation is to construe the statute, as most of the Courts of Appeals have done, to confine the exemption to transportation workers.
I
In October 1995, respondent Saint Clair Adams applied for a job at petitioner Circuit City Stores, Inc., a national retailer of consumer electronics. Adams signed an employment application which included the following provision:
Adams was hired as a sales counselor in Circuit City's store in Santa Rosa, California.
Two years later, Adams filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against Circuit City in state court, asserting claims under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, Cal. Govt. Code Ann. § 12900 et seq. (West 1992 and Supp. 1997), and other claims based on general tort theories under California law. 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 respondent's claims pursuant to the FAA, 9 U. S. C. §§ 1— 16. The District Court entered the requested order. Respondent, the court concluded, was obligated by the arbitration agreement to submit his claims against the employer to binding arbitration. An appeal followed.
While respondent's appeal was pending in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the court ruled on the key issue in an unrelated case. The court held the FAA does not apply to contracts of employment. See Craft v. Campbell Soup Co., 177 F.3d 1083 (1999). In the instant case, following the rule announced in Craft, the Court of Appeals held the arbitration agreement between Adams and Circuit City was contained in a "contract of employment," and so was not subject to the FAA. 194 F.3d 1070 (1999). Circuit City petitioned this Court, noting that the Ninth Circuit's
II
A
Congress enacted the FAA in 1925. As the Court has explained, the FAA was a response to hostility of American courts to the enforcement of arbitration agreements, a judicial disposition inherited from then-longstanding English practice. See, e. g., Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. v. Dobson, 513 U.S. 265, 270-271 (1995); Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20, 24 (1991). To give effect to this purpose, the FAA compels judicial enforcement of a wide range of written arbitration agreements. The FAA's coverage provision, § 2, provides that
We had occasion in Allied-Bruce, supra, at 273-277, to consider the significance of Congress' use of the words "involving commerce" in § 2. The analysis began with a reaffirmation of earlier decisions concluding that the FAA was enacted pursuant to Congress' substantive power to regulate interstate commerce and admiralty, see Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 395, 405 (1967), and that the Act was applicable in state courts and pre-emptive of state laws hostile to arbitration, see Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S. 1 (1984). Relying upon these background principles and upon the evident reach of the words "involving commerce," the Court interpreted § 2 as implementing Congress' intent "to exercise [its] commerce power to the full." Allied-Bruce, supra, at 277.
The instant case, of course, involves not the basic coverage authorization under § 2 of the Act, but the exemption from coverage under § 1. The exemption clause provides 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." 9 U. S. C. § 1. Most Courts of Appeals conclude the exclusion provision is limited to transportation workers, defined, for instance, as those workers "`actually engaged in the movement of goods in interstate commerce.' " Cole, supra, at 1471. As we stated at the outset, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit takes a different view and interprets the § 1 exception to exclude all contracts of employment from the reach of the FAA. This comprehensive exemption had been advocated by amici curiae in Gilmer, where we addressed the question whether a registered securities representative's employment discrimination claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq., could be submitted to arbitration pursuant to an agreement in his securities registration application.
B
Respondent, at the outset, contends that we need not address the meaning of the § 1 exclusion provision to decide the case in his favor. In his view, an employment contract is not a "contract evidencing a transaction involving interstate commerce" at all, since the word "transaction" in § 2 extends only to commercial contracts. See Craft, 177 F. 3d, at 1085 (concluding that § 2 covers only "commercial deal[s] or merchant's sale[s]"). This line of reasoning proves too much, for it would make the § 1 exclusion provision superfluous. If all contracts of employment are beyond the scope of the Act under the § 2 coverage provision, the separate exemption for "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in . . . interstate commerce" would be pointless. See, e. g., Pennsylvania Dept. of Public Welfare v. Davenport, 495 U.S. 552, 562 (1990) ("Our cases express a deep reluctance to interpret a statutory provision so as to render superfluous other provisions in the same enactment"). The proffered interpretation of "evidencing a transaction involving commerce," furthermore, would be inconsistent with Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (1991), where we held that § 2 required the arbitration of an age discrimination claim based on an agreement in a securities registration application, a dispute that did not arise from a "commercial deal or merchant's sale." Nor could respondent's construction of § 2 be reconciled with the expansive reading of those words adopted in Allied-Bruce, 513 U. S., at 277, 279-280. If, then,
Respondent, endorsing the reasoning of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the provision excludes all employment contracts, relies on the asserted breadth of the words "contracts of employment of . . . any other class of workers engaged in . . . commerce." Referring to our construction of § 2's coverage provision in Allied-Bruce —concluding that the words "involving commerce" evidence the congressional intent to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power—respondent contends § 1's interpretation should have a like reach, thus exempting all employment contracts. The two provisions, it is argued, are coterminous; under this view the "involving commerce" provision brings within the FAA's scope all contracts within the Congress' commerce power, and the "engaged in . . . commerce" language in § 1 in turn exempts from the FAA all employment contracts falling within that authority.
This reading of § 1, however, runs into an immediate and, in our view, insurmountable textual obstacle. Unlike the "involving commerce" language in § 2, the words "any other class of workers engaged in . . . commerce" constitute a residual phrase, following, in the same sentence, explicit reference to "seamen" and "railroad employees." Construing the residual phrase to exclude all employment contracts fails to give independent effect to the statute's enumeration of the specific categories of workers which precedes it; there would be no need for Congress to use the phrases "seamen" and "railroad employees" if those same classes of workers were subsumed within the meaning of the "engaged in . . . commerce" residual clause. The wording of § 1 calls for the application of the maxim ejusdem generis, the statutory canon that "[w]here general words follow specific words in a statutory enumeration, the general words are construed to
Canons of construction need not be conclusive and are often countered, of course, by some maxim pointing in a different direction. The application of the rule ejusdem generis in this case, however, is in full accord with other sound considerations bearing upon the proper interpretation of the clause. For even if the term "engaged in commerce" stood alone in § 1, we would not construe the provision to exclude all contracts of employment from the FAA. Congress uses different modifiers to the word "commerce" in the design and enactment of its statutes. The phrase "affecting commerce" indicates Congress' intent to regulate to the outer limits of its authority under the Commerce Clause. See, e. g., Allied-Bruce, 513 U. S., at 277. The "involving commerce" phrase, the operative words for the reach of the basic coverage provision in § 2, was at issue in Allied-Bruce. That particular phrase had not been interpreted before by this Court. Considering the usual meaning of the word "involving," and the pro-arbitration purposes of the FAA, Allied-Bruce held the "word `involving,' like `affecting,' signals an intent to exercise Congress' commerce power to the full." Ibid. Unlike those phrases, however, the general words "in commerce" and the specific phrase "engaged in commerce" are understood to have a more limited reach. In Allied-Bruce itself the Court said the words "in commerce" are "oftenfound words of art" that we have not read as expressing
It is argued that we should assess the meaning of the phrase "engaged in commerce" in a different manner here, because the FAA was enacted when congressional authority to regulate under the commerce power was to a large extent confined by our decisions. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 556 (1995) (noting that Supreme Court decisions beginning in 1937 "ushered in an era of Commerce Clause jurisprudence that greatly expanded the previously defined authority of Congress under that Clause"). When the FAA was enacted in 1925, respondent reasons, the phrase "engaged in commerce" was not a term of art indicating a limited assertion of congressional jurisdiction; to the contrary, it is said, the formulation came close to expressing the outer limits of Congress' power as then understood. See, e. g., The Employers' Liability Cases, 207 U.S. 463, 498 (1908) (holding unconstitutional jurisdictional provision in Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA) covering the employees of "every common carrier engaged in trade or commerce"); Second Employers' Liability Cases, 223 U.S. 1, 48-49 (1912); but cf. Illinois Central R. Co. v. Behrens, 233 U.S. 473 (1914) (noting in dicta that the amended FELA's application to common carriers "while engaging in commerce" did not reach all employment relationships within Congress' commerce power). Were this mode of interpretation to prevail, we would take into account the scope of the Commerce Clause, as then elaborated by the Court, at the date of the FAA's enactment in order to interpret what the statute means now.
The Court's reluctance to accept contentions that Congress used the words "in commerce" or "engaged in commerce" to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power rests on sound foundation, as it affords objective and consistent significance to the meaning of the words Congress uses when it defines the reach of a statute. To say that the statutory words "engaged in commerce" are subject to variable interpretations depending upon the date of adoption, even a date
In rejecting the contention that the meaning of the phrase "engaged in commerce" in § 1 of the FAA should be given a broader construction than justified by its evident language simply because it was enacted in 1925 rather than 1938, we do not mean to suggest that statutory jurisdictional formulations "necessarily have a uniform meaning whenever used by Congress." American Building Maintenance Industries, supra, at 277. As the Court has noted: "The judicial task in marking out the extent to which Congress has exercised its constitutional power over commerce is not that of devising an abstract formula." A. B. Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U.S. 517, 520 (1942). We must, of course, construe the "engaged in commerce" language in the FAA with reference to the statutory context in which it is found and in a manner consistent with the FAA's purpose. These considerations, however, further compel that the § 1 exclusion provision be afforded a narrow construction. As discussed above, the location of the phrase "any other class of workers engaged in . . . commerce" in a residual provision, after specific categories of workers have been enumerated, undermines any attempt to give the provision a sweeping, openended construction. And the fact that the provision is contained in a statute that "seeks broadly to overcome judicial hostility to arbitration agreements," Allied-Bruce, 513 U. S., at 272-273, which the Court concluded in Allied-Bruce counseled
In sum, the text of the FAA forecloses the construction of § 1 followed by the Court of Appeals in the case under review, a construction which would exclude all employment contracts from the FAA. While the historical arguments respecting Congress' understanding of its power in 1925 are not insubstantial, this fact alone does not give us basis to adopt, "by judicial decision rather than amendatory legislation," Gulf Oil, supra, at 202, an expansive construction of the FAA's exclusion provision that goes beyond the meaning of the words Congress used. While it is of course possible to speculate that Congress might have chosen a different jurisdictional formulation had it known that the Court would soon embrace a less restrictive reading of the Commerce Clause, the text of § 1 precludes interpreting the exclusion provision to defeat the language of § 2 as to all employment contracts. Section 1 exempts from the FAA only contracts of employment of transportation workers.
C
As the conclusion we reach today is directed by the text of § 1, we need not assess the legislative history of the exclusion provision. See Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 147— 148 (1994) ("[W]e do not resort to legislative history to cloud a statutory text that is clear"). We do note, however, that the legislative record on the § 1 exemption is quite sparse. Respondent points to no language in either Committee Report addressing the meaning of the provision, nor to any mention of the § 1 exclusion during debate on the FAA on the floor of the House or Senate. Instead, respondent places greatest reliance upon testimony before a Senate subcommittee hearing suggesting that the exception may have been added in response to the objections of the president of the International Seamen's Union of America. See Hearing on
Nor can we accept respondent's argument that our holding attributes an irrational intent to Congress. "Under petitioner's reading of § 1," he contends, "those employment contracts most involving interstate commerce, and thus most assuredly within the Commerce Clause power in 1925 . . . are excluded from [the] Act's coverage; while those employment contracts having a less direct and less certain connection to interstate commerce . . . would come within the Act's affirmative coverage and would not be excluded." Brief for Respondent 38 (emphases in original).
We see no paradox in the congressional decision to exempt the workers over whom the commerce power was most apparent. To the contrary, it is a permissible inference that the employment contracts of the classes of workers in § 1 were excluded from the FAA precisely because of Congress' undoubted authority to govern the employment relationships
As for the residual exclusion of "any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce," Congress' demonstrated concern with transportation workers and their necessary role in the free flow of goods explains the linkage to the two specific, enumerated types of workers identified in the preceding portion of the sentence. It would be rational for Congress to ensure that workers in general would be covered by the provisions of the FAA, while reserving for itself more specific legislation for those engaged in transportation. See Pryner v. Tractor Supply Co., 109 F. 3d, at 358 (Posner, C. J.). Indeed, such legislation was soon to follow, with the amendment of the Railway Labor Act in 1936 to include air carriers and their employees, see 49 Stat. 1189, 45 U. S. C. §§ 181-188.
III
Various amici, including the attorneys general of 21 States, object that the reading of the § 1 exclusion provision adopted today intrudes upon the policies of the separate States. They point out that, by requiring arbitration agreements in most employment contracts to be covered by the
It is not our holding today which is the proper target of this criticism. The line of argument is relevant instead to the Court's decision in Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S. 1 (1984), holding that Congress intended the FAA to apply in state courts, and to pre-empt state antiarbitration laws to the contrary. See id., at 16.
The question of Southland `s continuing vitality was given explicit consideration in Allied-Bruce, and the Court declined to overrule it. 513 U. S., at 272; see also id., at 282 (O'Connor, J., concurring). The decision, furthermore, is not directly implicated in this case, which concerns the application of the FAA in a federal, rather than in a state, court. The Court should not chip away at Southland by indirection, especially by the adoption of the variable statutory interpretation theory advanced by the respondent in the instant case. Not all of the Justices who join today's holding agreed with Allied-Bruce, see 513 U. S., at 284 (Scalia, J., dissenting); id., at 285 (Thomas, J., dissenting), but it would be incongruous to adopt, as we did in Allied-Bruce, a conventional reading of the FAA's coverage in § 2 in order to implement proarbitration policies and an unconventional reading of the reach of § 1 in order to undo the same coverage. In AlliedBruce the Court noted that Congress had not moved to overturn Southland, see 513 U. S., at 272; and we now note that it has not done so in response to Allied-Bruce itself.
Furthermore, for parties to employment contracts not involving the specific exempted categories set forth in § 1, it is true here, just as it was for the parties to the contract at issue in Allied-Bruce, that there are real benefits to the
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, and with whom Justice Souter joins as to Parts II and III, dissenting.
Justice Souter has cogently explained why the Court's parsimonious construction of § 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA or Act) is not consistent with its expansive reading of § 2. I join his dissent, but believe that the Court's heavy reliance on the views expressed by the Courts of Appeals during the past decade makes it appropriate to comment on three earlier chapters in the history of this venerable statute.
I
Section 2 of the FAA makes enforceable written agreements to arbitrate "in any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce." 9 U. S. C. § 2. If we 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.
Nevertheless, the original bill was opposed by representatives of organized labor, most notably the president of the International Seamen's Union of America,
The irony of the Court's reading of § 2 to include contracts of employment is compounded by its cramped interpretation of the exclusion inserted into § 1. As proposed and enacted, the exclusion fully responded to the concerns of the Seamen's Union and other labor organizations that § 2 might encompass
II
A quarter century after the FAA was passed, many Courts of Appeals were presented with the question whether collective-bargaining agreements were "contracts of employment" for purposes of § 1's exclusion. The courts split over that question, with at least the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Circuits answering in the affirmative,
The contrary view that the Court endorses today—namely, that only employees engaged in interstate transportation are excluded by § 1—was not expressed until 1954, by the Third Circuit in Tenney Engineering, Inc. v. Electrical Workers, 207 F.2d 450, 452 (1953). And that decision, significantly, was rejected shortly thereafter by the Fourth Circuit. See Electrical Workers v. Miller Metal Products, Inc., 215 F.2d 221, 224 (1954). The conflict among the Circuits that persisted in the 1950's thus suggests that it may be inappropriate to attach as much weight to recent Court of Appeals opinions as the Court does in this case. See ante, at 109, 110-111, 112.
Even more important than the 1950's conflict, however, is the way in which this Court tried to resolve the debate. In Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U.S. 448 (1957), the Court granted certiorari to consider the union's claim that, in a suit brought under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), a federal court may enforce the arbitration clause in a collective-bargaining agreement. The union argued that such authority was implicitly granted by § 301 and explicitly granted by § 2 of the FAA. In support of the latter argument, the union asked the Court to rule either that a collective-bargaining agreement is not a "contrac[t] of employment" within the meaning of the exclusion in § 1, or that the exclusion is limited to transportation workers.
Even if Justice Frankfurter's description of the majority's rejection of the applicability of the FAA does not suffice to establish Textile Workers as precedent for the meaning of § 1, his opinion unquestionably reveals his own interpretation of the Act. Moreover, given that Justice Marshall and I have also subscribed to that reading of § 1,
III
Times have changed. Judges in the 19th century disfavored private arbitration. The 1925 Act was intended to overcome that attitude, but a number of this Court's cases decided in the last several decades have pushed the pendulum
It is not necessarily wrong for the Court to put its own imprint on a statute. But when its refusal to look beyond the raw statutory text enables it to disregard countervailing considerations that were expressed by Members of the enacting Congress and that remain valid today, the Court misuses its authority. As the history of the legislation indicates, the potential disparity in bargaining power between individual employees and large employers was the source of organized labor's opposition to the Act, which it feared would require courts to enforce unfair employment contracts. That same concern, as Justice Souter points out, see post, at 138, n. 2, underlay Congress' exemption of contracts of
This case illustrates the wisdom of an observation made by Justice Aharon Barak of the Supreme Court of Israel. He has perceptively noted that the "minimalist" judge "who holds that the purpose of the statute may be learned only from its language" has more discretion than the judge "who will seek guidance from every reliable source." Judicial Discretion 62 (Y. Kaufmann transl. 1989). A method of statutory interpretation that is deliberately uninformed, and hence unconstrained, may produce a result that is consistent with a court's own views of how things should be, but it may also defeat the very purpose for which a provision was enacted. That is the sad result in this case.
I respectfully dissent.
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.
Section 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA or Act) provides for the enforceability of a written arbitration clause in "any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce," 9 U. S. C. § 2, while § 1 exempts from the Act's coverage "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." Whatever the understanding of Congress's implied admiralty power may have been when the Act was passed in 1925, the commerce power was then thought to be far narrower than we have subsequently come to see it. As a consequence, there are two quite different ways of reading the scope of the Act's provisions. One way would be to say, for example, that the coverage provision extends only to those contracts "involving commerce" that were understood to be covered in 1925; the other would be to read it as exercising Congress's commerce jurisdiction in its modern conception in the same way it was
In Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. v. Dobson, 513 U.S. 265 (1995), we decided that the elastic understanding of § 2 was the more sensible way to give effect to what Congress intended when it legislated to cover contracts "involving commerce," a phrase that we found an apt way of providing that coverage would extend to the outer constitutional limits under the Commerce Clause. The question here is whether a similarly general phrase in the § 1 exemption, referring to contracts of "any . . . class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce," should receive a correspondingly evolutionary reading, so as to expand the exemption for employment contracts to keep pace with the enhanced reach of the general enforceability provision. If it is tempting to answer yes, on the principle that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, it is sobering to realize that the Courts of Appeals have, albeit with some fits and starts as noted by Justice Stevens, ante, at 129-130 (dissenting opinion),
The number of courts arrayed against reading the § 1 exemption in a way that would allow it to grow parallel to the expanding § 2 coverage reflects the fact that this minority view faces two hurdles, each textually based and apparent from the face of the Act. First, the language of coverage (a contract evidencing a transaction "involving commerce") is different from the language of the exemption (a contract of a worker "engaged in . . . commerce"). Second, the "engaged in . . .commerce" catchall phrase in the exemption is placed in the text following more specific exemptions for employment contracts of "seamen" and "railroad employees." The placement possibly indicates that workers who are excused from arbitrating by virtue of the catchall exclusion must resemble seamen and railroad workers, perhaps by being employees who actually handle and move goods as they are shipped interstate or internationally.
Neither hurdle turns out to be a bar, however. The first objection is at best inconclusive and weaker than the grounds to reject it; the second is even more certainly inapposite, for reasons the Court itself has stated but misunderstood.
I
Is Congress further from a plenary exercise of the commerce power when it deals with contracts of workers "engaged in . . . commerce" than with contracts detailing transactions "involving commerce?" The answer is an easy yes, insofar as the former are only the class of labor contracts, while the latter are not so limited. But that is not the point. The question is whether Congress used language indicating that it meant to cover as many contracts as the Commerce Clause allows it to reach within each class of contracts addressed. In Allied-Bruce we examined the 1925 context and held that "involving commerce" showed just such a plenary intention, even though at the time we decided that case
Again looking to the context of the time, I reach the same conclusion about the phrase "engaged in commerce" as a description of employment contracts exempted from the Act. When the Act was passed (and the commerce power was closely confined) our case law indicated that the only employment relationships subject to the commerce power were those in which workers were actually engaged in interstate commerce. Compare The Employers' Liability Cases, 207 U.S. 463, 496, 498 (1908) (suggesting that regulation of the employment relations of railroad employees "actually engaged in an operation of interstate commerce" is permissible under the Commerce Clause but that regulation of a railroad company's clerical force is not), with Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, 271-276 (1918) (invalidating statute that had the "necessary effect" of "regulat[ing] the hours of labor of children in factories and mines within the States"). Thus, by using "engaged in" for the exclusion, Congress showed an intent to exclude to the limit of its power to cover employment contracts in the first place, and it did so just as clearly as its use of "involving commerce" showed its intent to legislate to the hilt over commercial contracts at a more general level. That conclusion is in fact borne out by the statement of the then-Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, who suggested to Congress that the § 1 exclusion language should be adopted "[i]f objection appears to the inclusion of workers' contracts in the law's scheme." Sales and Contracts to Sell in Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and Federal Commercial Arbitration: Hearing on S. 4213 and S. 4214 before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 67th Cong., 4th Sess., 14 (1923) (hereinafter Hearing on S. 4213 et al.).
The Court has no good reason, therefore, to reject a reading of "engaged in" as an expression of intent to legislate to the full extent of the commerce power over employment contracts. The statute is accordingly entitled to a coherent reading as a whole, see, e. g., King v. St. Vincent's Hospital, 502 U.S. 215, 221 (1991), by treating the exemption for employment contracts as keeping pace with the expanded understanding of the commerce power generally.
II
The second hurdle is cleared more easily still,and the Court has shown how. Like some Courts of Appeals before it, the majority today finds great significance in the fact that the generally phrased exemption for the employment contracts of workers "engaged in commerce" does not stand alone, but occurs at the end of a sequence of more specific
Like many interpretive canons, however, ejusdem generis is a fallback, and if there are good reasons not to apply it, it is put aside. E. g., Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Train Dispatchers, 499 U.S. 117, 129 (1991).
The Court tries to deflect the anomaly of excluding only carrier contracts by suggesting that Congress used the reference to seamen and rail workers to indicate the class of employees whose employment relations it had already legislated about and would be most likely to legislate about in the future. Ante, at 120-121. This explanation, however, does nothing to eliminate the anomaly. On the contrary, the explanation tells us why Congress might have referred specifically to the sea and rail workers; but, if so, it also indicates that Congress almost certainly intended the catchall phrase to be just as broad as its terms, without any interpretive squeeze in the name of ejusdem generis.
The very fact, as the Court points out, that Congress already had spoken on the subjects of sailors and rail workers and had tailored the legislation to the particular circumstances of the sea and rail carriers may well have been reason for mentioning them specifically. But making the specific references was in that case an act of special care to make sure that the FAA not be construed to modify the existing legislation so exactly aimed; that was no reason at all to limit the general FAA exclusion from applying to employment
Nothing stands in the way of construing the coverage and exclusion clauses together, consistently and coherently. I respectfully dissent.
FootNotes
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the United States by Solicitor General Waxman, Deputy Solicitor General Underwood, James A. Feldman, Henry L. Solano, Philip B. Sklover, and Robert J. Gregory; for the State of California et al. by Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California, Richard M. Frank, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Louis Verdugo, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Catherine Z. Ysrael, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Thomas P. Reilly, Deputy Attorney General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, James E. Ryan of Illinois, Thomas J. Miller of Iowa, Thomas F. Reilly of Massachusetts, Mike Hatch of Minnesota, Mike Moore of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, John J. Farmer, Jr., of New Jersey, Eliot Spitzer of New York, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, D. Michael Fisher of Pennsylvania, William H. Sorrell of Vermont, Christine O. Gregoire of Washington, and Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., of West Virginia; for the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Department of Industrial Relations, State of California, by William A. Reich; for AARP by Thomas W. Osborne, Laurie A. McCann, Sally P. Dunaway, and Melvin Radowitz; for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America by Jeffrey Robert White, Eric Schnapper, and Frederick M. Baron; for Law Professors by Robert Belton, James J. Brudney, David S. Schwartz, Nathan P. Feinsinger, James E. Jones, Jr., Cynthia L. Estlund, Michael H. Gottesman, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Katherine Van Wezel, and Clyde W. Summers; for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law et al. by Paul W. Mollica, Daniel F. Kolb, John Payton, Norman Redlich, Barbara R. Arnwine, Thomas J. Henderson, Richard T. Seymour, Teresa A. Ferrante, Elaine R. Jones, Theodore M. Shaw, Norman J. Chachkin, Charles Stephen Ralston, Dennis C. Hayes, Antonia Hernandez, Judith L. Lichtman, Donna R. Lenhoff, Marcia D. Greenberger, Julie Goldscheid, and Yolanda S. Wu; for the National Academy of Arbitrators by David E. Feller and John Kagel; and for the National Employment Lawyers Association by James M. True III and Paula A. Brantner.
Lewis Maltby filed a brief for the National Workrights Institute as amicus curiae.
"[T]his bill provides for reintroduction of forced or involuntary labor, if the freeman through his necessities shall be induced to sign. Will such contracts be signed? Esau agreed, because he was hungry. It was the desire to live that caused slavery to begin and continue. With the growing hunger in modern society, there will be but few that will be able to resist. The personal hunger of the seaman, and the hunger of the wife and children of the railroad man will surely tempt them to sign, and so with sundry other workers in `Interstate and Foreign Commerce. ` " Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Convention of the International Seamen's Union of America 203-204 (1923) (emphasis added).
"Protests from the American Federation of Labor and the International Seamen's Union brought an amendment which provided that `nothing herein contained shall apply to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employes or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.' This exempted labor from the provisions of the law, although its sponsors denied there was any intention to include labor disputes." Proceedings of the Forty-fifth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor 52 (1925).
"`The trouble about the matter is that a great many of these contracts that are entered into are really not voluntar[y] things at all. .. . It is the same with a good many contracts of employment. A man says, "These are our terms. All right, take it or leave it." Well, there is nothing for the man to do except to sign it; and then he surrenders his right to have his case tried by the court, and has to have ittried before a tribunal in which he has no confidence at all.' " Hearing on S. 4213 et al., at 9.
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