EPIC SYSTEMS CORP. v. LEWIS
No. 16–285, 823 F. 3d 1147, and No. 16–300, 834 F. 3d 975, reversed and remanded; No. 16–307, 808 F. 3d 1013, affirmed.
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis
In each of these cases, an employer and employee entered into a contract providing for individualized arbitration proceedings to resolve employment disputes between the parties. Each employee nonetheless sought to litigate Fair Labor Standards Act and related state law claims through class or collective actions in federal court. Although the Federal Arbitration Act generally requires courts to enforce arbitration agreements as written, the employees argued that its “saving clause” removes this obligation if an arbitration agreement violates some other federal law and that, by requiring individualized proceedings, the agreements here violated the National Labor Relations Act. The employers countered that the Arbitration Act protects agreements requiring arbitration from judicial interference and that neither the saving clause nor the NLRA demands a different conclusion. Until recently, courts as well as the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel agreed that such arbitration agreements are enforceable. In 2012, however, the Board ruled that the NLRA effectively nullifies the Arbitration Act in cases like these, and since then other courts have either agreed with or deferred to the Board’s position.
Held: Congress has instructed in the Arbitration Act that arbitration agreements providing for individualized proceedings must be enforced, and neither the Arbitration Act’s saving clause nor the NLRA suggests otherwise. Pp. 5–25.
(a) The Arbitration Act requires courts to enforce agreements to arbitrate, including the terms of arbitration the parties select. See 9 U. S. C. §§2, 3, 4. These emphatic directions would seem to resolve any argument here. The Act’s saving clause—which allows courts to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements “upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract,” §2—recognizes only “ ‘generally applicable contract defenses, such as fraud, duress, or unconscionability,’ ” AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333, 339, not defenses targeting arbitration either by name or by more subtle methods, such as by “interfer[ing] with fundamental attributes of arbitration,” id., at 344. By challenging the agreements precisely because they require individualized arbitration instead of class or collective proceedings, the employees seek to interfere with one of these fundamental attributes. Pp. 5–9.
(b) The employees also mistakenly claim that, even if the Arbitration Act normally requires enforcement of arbitration agreements like theirs, the NLRA overrides that guidance and renders their agreements unlawful yet. When confronted with two Acts allegedly touching on the same topic, this Court must strive “to give effect to both.” Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 551. To prevail, the employees must show a “ ‘clear and manifest’ ” congressional intention to displace one Act with another. Ibid. There is a “stron[g] presum[ption]” that disfavors repeals by implication and that “Congress will specifically address” preexisting law before suspending the law’s normal operations in a later statute. United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439, 452, 453.
The employees ask the Court to infer that class and collective actions are “concerted activities” protected by §7 of the NLRA, which guarantees employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively . . . , and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,” 29 U. S. C. §157. But §7 focuses on the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. It does not mention class or collective action procedures or even hint at a clear and manifest wish to displace the Arbitration Act. It is unlikely that Congress wished to confer a right to class or collective actions in §7, since those procedures were hardly known when the NLRA was adopted in 1935. Because the catchall term “other concerted activities for the purpose of . . . other mutual aid or protection” appears at the end of a detailed list of activities, it should be understood to protect the same kind of things, i.e., things employees do for themselves in the course of exercising their right to free association in the workplace.
The NLRA’s structure points to the same conclusion. After speak ing of various “concerted activities” in §7, the statute establishes a detailed regulatory regime applicable to each item on the list, but gives no hint about what rules should govern the adjudication of class or collective actions in court or arbitration. Nor is it at all obvious what rules should govern on such essential issues as opt-out and opt-in procedures, notice to class members, and class certification standards. Telling too is the fact that Congress has shown that it knows exactly how to specify certain dispute resolution procedures, cf., e.g., 29 U. S. C. §§216(b), 626, or to override the Arbitration Act, see, e.g., 15 U. S. C. §1226(a)(2), but Congress has done nothing like that in the NLRA.
The employees suggest that the NLRA does not discuss class and collective action procedures because it means to confer a right to use existing procedures provided by statute or rule, but the NLRA does not say even that much. And if employees do take existing rules as they find them, they must take them subject to those rules’ inherent limitations, including the principle that parties may depart from them in favor of individualized arbitration.
In another contextual clue, the employees’ underlying causes of action arise not under the NLRA but under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which permits the sort of collective action the employees wish to pursue here. Yet they do not suggest that the FLSA displaces the Arbitration Act, presumably because the Court has held that an identical collective action scheme does not prohibit individualized arbitration proceedings, see Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 32. The employees’ theory also runs afoul of the rule that Congress “does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions,” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468, as it would allow a catchall term in the NLRA to dictate the particulars of dispute resolution procedures in Article III courts or arbitration proceedings—matters that are usually left to, e.g., the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Arbitration Act, and the FLSA. Nor does the employees’ invocation of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, a predecessor of the NLRA, help their argument. That statute declares unenforceable contracts in conflict with its policy of protecting workers’ “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,” 29 U. S. C. §102, and just as under the NLRA, that policy does not conflict with Congress’s directions favoring arbitration.
Precedent confirms the Court’s reading. The Court has rejected many efforts to manufacture conflicts between the Arbitration Act and other federal statutes, see, e.g. American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 570 U. S. 228; and its §7 cases have generally involved efforts related to organizing and collective bargaining in the workplace, not the treatment of class or collective action procedures in court or arbitration, see, e.g., NLRB v. Washington Aluminum Co., 370 U. S. 9.
Finally, the employees cannot expect deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, because Chevron’s essential premises are missing. The Board sought not to interpret just the NLRA, “which it administers,” id., at 842, but to interpret that statute in a way that limits the work of the Arbitration Act, which the agency does not administer. The Board and the Solicitor General also dispute the NLRA’s meaning, articulating no single position on which the Executive Branch might be held “accountable to the people.” Id., at 865. And after “employing traditional tools of statutory construction,” id., at 843, n. 9, including the canon against reading conflicts into statutes, there is no unresolved ambiguity for the Board to address. Pp. 9–21.
No. 16–285, 823 F. 3d 1147, and No. 16–300, 834 F. 3d 975, reversed and remanded; No. 16–307, 808 F. 3d 1013, affirmed.
Gorsuch , J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts , C. J., and Kennedy , Thomas , and Alito , JJ., joined. T homas, J., filed a concurring opinion. Ginsburg , J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer , Sotomayor , and Kagan , JJ., joined.
1 Together with No. 16–300, Ernst & Young LLP et al. v. Morris et al., on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and No. 16–307, National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., et al., on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 16–285, 16–300, 16–307
EPIC SYSTEMS CORPORATION, PETITIONER
ERNST & YOUNG LLP, et al. , PETITIONERS
STEPHEN MORRIS, et al. ; AND
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, PETITIONER
MURPHY OIL USA, INC., et al .
Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the Court.
Should employees and employers be allowed to agree that any disputes between them will be resolved through one-on-one arbitration? Or should employees always be permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions, no matter what they agreed with their employers?
As a matter of policy these questions are surely debat- able. But as a matter of law the answer is clear. In the Federal Arbitration Act, Congress has instructed federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms—including terms providing for individualized proceedings. Nor can we agree with the employees’ suggestion that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) offers a conflicting command. It is this Court’s duty to interpret Congress’s statutes as a harmonious whole rather than at war with one another. And abiding that duty here leads to an unmistakable conclusion. The NLRA secures to employees rights to organize unions and bargain collectively, but it says nothing about how judges and arbitrators must try legal disputes that leave the workplace and enter the courtroom or arbitral forum. This Court has never read a right to class actions into the NLRA—and for three quarters of a century neither did the National Labor Relations Board. Far from conflicting, the Arbitration Act and the NLRA have long enjoyed separate spheres of influence and neither permits this Court to declare the parties’ agreements unlawful.
The three cases before us differ in detail but not in substance. Take Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris. There Ernst & Young and one of its junior accountants, Stephen Morris, entered into an agreement providing that they would arbitrate any disputes that might arise between them. The agreement stated that the employee could choose the arbitration provider and that the arbitrator could “grant any relief that could be granted by . . . a court” in the relevant jurisdiction. App. in No. 16–300, p. 43. The agreement also specified individualized arbitration, with claims “pertaining to different [e]mployees [to] be heard in separate proceedings.” Id., at 44.
After his employment ended, and despite having agreed to arbitrate claims against the firm, Mr. Morris sued Ernst & Young in federal court. He alleged that the firm had misclassified its junior accountants as professional employees and violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and California law by paying them salaries without overtime pay. Although the arbitration agreement provided for individualized proceedings, Mr. Morris sought to litigate the federal claim on behalf of a nationwide class under the FLSA’s collective action provision, 29 U. S. C. §216(b). He sought to pursue the state law claim as a class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.
Ernst & Young replied with a motion to compel arbitration. The district court granted the request, but the Ninth Circuit reversed this judgment. 834 F. 3d 975 (2016). The Ninth Circuit recognized that the Arbitration Act gener- ally requires courts to enforce arbitration agreements as written. But the court reasoned that the statute’s “saving clause,” see 9 U. S. C. §2, removes this obligation if an arbitration agreement violates some other federal law. And the court concluded that an agreement requiring individualized arbitration proceedings violates the NLRA by barring employees from engaging in the “concerted activit[y],” 29 U. S. C. §157, of pursuing claims as a class or collective action.
Judge Ikuta dissented. In her view, the Arbitration Act protected the arbitration agreement from judicial interference and nothing in the Act’s saving clause suggested otherwise. Neither, she concluded, did the NLRA demand a different result. Rather, that statute focuses on protecting unionization and collective bargaining in the workplace, not on guaranteeing class or collective action procedures in disputes before judges or arbitrators.
Although the Arbitration Act and the NLRA have long coexisted—they date from 1925 and 1935, respectively—the suggestion they might conflict is something quite new. Until a couple of years ago, courts more or less agreed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced according to their terms. See, e.g., Owen v. Bristol Care, Inc., 702 F. 3d 1050 (CA8 2013); Sutherland v. Ernst & Young LLP, 726 F. 3d 290 (CA2 2013); D. R. Horton, Inc. v. NLRB, 737 F. 3d 344 (CA5 2013); Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348, 327 P. 3d 129 (2014); Tallman v. Eighth Jud. Dist. Court, 131 Nev. 71, 359 P. 3d 113 (2015); 808 F. 3d 1013 (CA5 2015) (case below in No. 16–307).
The National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel expressed much the same view in 2010. Remarking that employees and employers “can benefit from the relative simplicity and informality of resolving claims before arbitrators,” the general counsel opined that the validity of such agreements “does not involve consideration of the policies of the National Labor Relations Act.” Memorandum GC 10–06, pp. 2, 5 (June 16, 2010).
But recently things have shifted. In 2012, the Board—for the first time in the 77 years since the NLRA’s adoption—asserted that the NLRA effectively nullifies the Arbitration Act in cases like ours. D. R. Horton, Inc., 357 N. L. R. B. 2277. Initially, this agency decision received a cool reception in court. See D. R. Horton, 737 F. 3d, at 355–362. In the last two years, though, some circuits have either agreed with the Board’s conclusion or thought themselves obliged to defer to it under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 (1984). See 823 F. 3d 1147 (CA7 2016) (case below in No. 16–285); 834 F. 3d 975 (case below in No. 16–300); NLRB v. Alternative Entertainment, Inc., 858 F. 3d 393 (CA6 2017). More recently still, the disagreement has grown as the Executive has disavowed the Board’s (most recent) position, and the Solicitor General and the Board have offered us battling briefs about the law’s meaning. We granted certiorari to clear the confusion. 580 U. S. ___ (2017).
We begin with the Arbitration Act and the question of its saving clause.
Congress adopted the Arbitration Act in 1925 in response to a perception that courts were unduly hostile to arbitration. No doubt there was much to that perception. Before 1925, English and American common law courts routinely refused to enforce agreements to arbitrate disputes. Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S. 506, 510, n. 4 (1974). But in Congress’s judgment arbitration had more to offer than courts recognized—not least the promise of quicker, more informal, and often cheaper resolutions for everyone involved. Id., at 511. So Congress directed courts to abandon their hostility and instead treat arbitration agreements as “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable.” 9 U. S. C. §2. The Act, this Court has said, establishes “a liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements.” Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24 (1983) (citing Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 395 (1967)); see id., at 404 (discussing “the plain meaning of the statute” and “the unmistakably clear congressional purpose that the arbitration procedure, when selected by the parties to a contract, be speedy and not subject to delay and obstruction in the courts”).
Not only did Congress require courts to respect and enforce agreements to arbitrate; it also specifically directed them to respect and enforce the parties’ chosen arbitration procedures. See §3 (providing for a stay of litigation pending arbitration “in accordance with the terms of the agreement”); §4 (providing for “an order directing that . . . arbitration proceed in the manner provided for in such agreement”). Indeed, we have often observed that the Arbitration Act requires courts “rigorously” to “enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms, including terms that specify with whom the parties choose to arbitrate their disputes and the rules under which that arbitration will be conducted.” American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 570 U. S. 228, 233 (2013) (some emphasis added; citations, internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted).
On first blush, these emphatic directions would seem to resolve any argument under the Arbitration Act. The parties before us contracted for arbitration. They pro- ceeded to specify the rules that would govern their arbitrations, indicating their intention to use individualized rather than class or collective action procedures. And this much the Arbitration Act seems to protect pretty absolutely. See AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333 (2011); Italian Colors, supra; DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, 577 U. S. ___ (2015). You might wonder if the balance Congress struck in 1925 between arbitration and litigation should be revisited in light of more contemporary developments. You might even ask if the Act was good policy when enacted. But all the same you might find it difficult to see how to avoid the statute’s application.
Still, the employees suggest the Arbitration Act’s saving clause creates an exception for cases like theirs. By its terms, the saving clause allows courts to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements “upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” §2. That provision applies here, the employees tell us, because the NLRA renders their particular class and collective action waivers illegal. In their view, illegality under the NLRA is a “ground” that “exists at law . . . for the revocation” of their arbitration agreements, at least to the extent those agreements prohibit class or collective action proceedings.
The problem with this line of argument is fundamental. Put to the side the question whether the saving clause was designed to save not only state law defenses but also defenses allegedly arising from federal statutes. See 834 F. 3d, at 991–992, 997 (Ikuta, J., dissenting). Put to the side the question of what it takes to qualify as a ground for “revocation” of a contract. See Concepcion, supra, at 352–355 ( Thomas, J ., concurring); post, at 1–2 ( Thomas, J. , concurring). Put to the side for the moment, too, even the question whether the NLRA actually renders class and collective action waivers illegal. Assuming (but not granting) the employees could satisfactorily answer all those questions, the saving clause still can’t save their cause.
It can’t because the saving clause recognizes only defenses that apply to “any” contract. In this way the clause establishes a sort of “equal-treatment” rule for arbitration contracts. Kindred Nursing Centers L. P. v. Clark, 581 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 4). The clause “permits agreements to arbitrate to be invalidated by ‘generally applicable contract defenses, such as fraud, duress, or unconscionability.’ ” Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 339. At the same time, the clause offers no refuge for “defenses that apply only to arbitration or that derive their meaning from the fact that an agreement to arbitrate is at issue.” Ibid. Under our precedent, this means the saving clause does not save defenses that target arbitration either by name or by more subtle methods, such as by “interfer[ing] with fundamental attributes of arbitration.” Id., at 344; see Kindred Nursing, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 5).
This is where the employees’ argument stumbles. They 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.
We know this much because of Concepcion. There this Court faced a state law defense that prohibited as uncon scionable class action waivers in consumer contracts. The Court readily acknowledged that the defense formally applied in both the litigation and the arbitration context. 563 U. S., at 338, 341. But, the Court held, the defense failed to qualify for protection under the saving clause because it interfered with a fundamental attribute of arbitration all the same. It did so by effectively permitting any party in arbitration to demand classwide proceedings despite the traditionally individualized and informal nature of arbitration. This “fundamental” change to the traditional arbitration process, the Court said, would “sacrific[e] the principal advantage of arbitration—its informality—and mak[e] the process slower, more costly, and more likely to generate procedural morass than final judgment.” Id., at 347, 348. Not least, Concepcion noted, arbitrators would have to decide whether the named class representatives are sufficiently representative and typical of the class; what kind of notice, opportunity to be heard, and right to opt out absent class members should enjoy; and how discovery should be altered in light of the classwide nature of the proceedings. Ibid. All of which would take much time and effort, and introduce new risks and costs for both sides. Ibid. In the Court’s judgment, the virtues Congress originally saw in arbitration, its speed and simplicity and inexpensiveness, would be shorn away and arbitration would wind up looking like the litigation it was meant to displace.
Of course, Concepcion has its limits. The Court recognized that parties remain free to alter arbitration procedures to suit their tastes, and in recent years some parties have sometimes chosen to arbitrate on a classwide basis. Id., at 351. But Concepcion’s essential insight remains: courts may not allow a contract defense to reshape traditional individualized arbitration by mandating classwide arbitration procedures without the parties’ consent. Id., at 344–351; see also Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662, 684–687 (2010). Just as judicial antagonism toward arbitration before the Arbitration Act’s enactment “manifested itself in a great variety of devices and formulas declaring arbitration against public policy,” Concepcion teaches that we must be alert to new devices and formulas that would achieve much the same result today. 563 U. S., at 342 (internal quotation marks omitted). And a rule seeking to declare individualized arbitration proceedings off limits is, the Court held, just such a device.
The employees’ efforts to distinguish Concepcion fall short. They note that their putative NLRA defense would render an agreement “illegal” as a matter of federal statutory law rather than “unconscionable” as a matter of state common law. But we don’t see how that distinction makes any difference in light of Concepion’s rationale and rule. Illegality, like unconscionability, may be a traditional, generally applicable contract defense in many cases, including arbitration cases. But an argument that a contract is unenforceable just because it requires bilateral arbitration is a different creature. A defense of that kind, Concepcion tells us, is one that impermissibly disfavors arbitration whether it sounds in illegality or unconscion- ability. The law of precedent teaches that like cases should generally be treated alike, and appropriate respect for that principle means the Arbitration Act’s saving clause can no more save the defense at issue in these cases than it did the defense at issue in Concepcion. At the end of our encounter with the Arbitration Act, then, it appears just as it did at the beginning: a congressional command requiring us to enforce, not override, the terms of the arbitration agreements before us.
But that’s not the end of it. Even if the Arbitration Act normally requires us to enforce arbitration agreements like theirs, the employees reply that the NLRA overrides that guidance in these cases and commands us to hold their agreements unlawful yet.
This argument faces a stout uphill climb. When confronted with two Acts of Congress allegedly touching on the same topic, this Court is not at “liberty to pick and choose among congressional enactments” and must instead strive “ ‘to give effect to both.’ ” Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535, 551 (1974). A party seeking to suggest that two statutes cannot be harmonized, and that one displaces the other, bears the heavy burden of showing “ ‘a clearly expressed congressional intention’ ” that such a result should follow. Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S. A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U. S. 528, 533 (1995). The intention must be “ ‘clear and manifest.’ ” Morton, supra, at 551. And in approaching a claimed conflict, we come armed with the “stron[g] presum[ption]” that repeals by implication are “disfavored” and that “Congress will specifically address” preexisting law when it wishes to suspend its normal operations in a later statute. United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439, 452, 453 (1988).
These rules exist for good reasons. Respect for Congress as drafter counsels against too easily finding irreconcilable conflicts in its work. More than that, respect for the separation of powers counsels restraint. Allowing judges to pick and choose between statutes risks transforming them from expounders of what the law is into policymakers choosing what the law should be. Our rules aiming for harmony over conflict in statutory interpretation grow from an appreciation that it’s the job of Congress by legislation, not this Court by supposition, both to write the laws and to repeal them.
Seeking to demonstrate an irreconcilable statutory conflict even in light of these demanding standards, the employees point to Section 7 of the NLRA. That provision guarantees workers
“the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” 29 U. S. C. §157.
From this language, the employees ask us to infer a clear and manifest congressional command to displace the Arbitration Act and outlaw agreements like theirs.
But that much inference is more than this Court may make. Section 7 focuses on the right to organize unions and bargain collectively. It may permit unions to bargain to prohibit arbitration. Cf. 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U. S. 247, 256–260 (2009). But it does not express approval or disapproval of arbitration. It does not mention class or collective action procedures. It does not even hint at a wish to displace the Arbitration Act—let alone accomplish that much clearly and manifestly, as our precedents demand.
Neither should any of this come as a surprise. The notion that Section 7 confers a right to class or collective actions seems pretty unlikely when you recall that procedures like that were hardly known when the NLRA was adopted in 1935. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 didn’t create the modern class action until 1966; class arbitration didn’t emerge until later still; and even the Fair Labor Standards Act’s collective action provision postdated Section 7 by years. See Rule 23–Class Actions, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 1258 (1964 ed., Supp. II); 52 Stat. 1069; Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 349; see also Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 700–701 (1979) (noting that the “usual rule” then was litigation “conducted by and on behalf of individual named parties only”). And while some forms of group litigation existed even in 1935, see 823 F. 3d, at 1154, Section 7’s failure to mention them only reinforces that the statute doesn’t speak to such procedures.
A close look at the employees’ best evidence of a potential conflict turns out to reveal no conflict at all. The employees direct our attention to the term “other con- certed activities for the purpose of . . . other mutual aid or protection.” This catchall term, they say, can be read to include class and collective legal actions. But the term appears at the end of a detailed list of activities speaking of “self-organization,” “form[ing], join[ing], or assist[ing] labor organizations,” and “bargain[ing] collectively.” 29 U. S. C. §157. And where, as here, a more general term follows more specific terms in a list, the general term is usually understood to “ ‘embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects enumerated by the preceding specific words.’ ” Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 115 (2001) (discussing ejusdem generis canon); National Assn. of Mfrs. v. Department of Defense, 583 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 10). All of which suggests that the term “other concerted activities” should, like the terms that precede it, serve to protect things employees “just do” for themselves in the course of exercising their right to free association in the workplace, rather than “the highly regulated, courtroom-bound ‘activities’ of class and joint litigation.” Alternative Entertainment, 858 F. 3d, at 414–415 (Sutton, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis deleted). None of the preceding and more specific terms speaks to the procedures judges or arbitrators must apply in disputes that leave the workplace and enter the courtroom or arbitral forum, and there is no textually sound reason to suppose the final catchall term should bear such a radically different object than all its predecessors.
The NLRA’s broader structure underscores the point. After speaking of various “concerted activities” in Section 7, Congress proceeded to establish a regulatory regime applicable to each of them. The NLRA provides rules for the recognition of exclusive bargaining representatives, 29 U. S. C. §159, explains employees’ and employers’ obligation to bargain collectively, §158(d), and conscribes certain labor organization practices, §§158(a)(3), (b). The NLRA also touches on other concerted activities closely related to organization and collective bargaining, such as picketing, §158(b)(7), and strikes, §163. It even sets rules for adjudicatory proceedings under the NLRA itself. §§160, 161. Many of these provisions were part of the original NLRA in 1935, see 49 Stat. 449, while others were added later. But missing entirely from this careful regime is any hint about what rules should govern the adjudication of class or collective actions in court or arbitration. Without some comparably specific guidance, it’s not at all obvious what procedures Section 7 might protect. Would opt-out class action procedures suffice? Or would opt-in procedures be necessary? What notice might be owed to absent class members? What standards would govern class certification? Should the same rules always apply or should they vary based on the nature of the suit? Nothing in the NLRA even whispers to us on any of these essential questions. And it is hard to fathom why Congress would take such care to regulate all the other matters mentioned in Section 7 yet remain mute about this matter alone—unless, of course, Section 7 doesn’t speak to class and collective action procedures in the first place.
Telling, too, is the fact that when Congress wants to mandate particular dispute resolution procedures it knows exactly how to do so. Congress has spoken often and clearly to the procedures for resolving “actions,” “claims,” “charges,” and “cases” in statute after statute. E.g., 29 U. S. C. §§216(b), 626; 42 U. S. C. §§2000e–5(b), (f)(3)–(5). Congress has likewise shown that it knows how to override the Arbitration Act when it wishes—by explaining, for example, that, “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law, . . . arbitration may be used . . . only if” certain condi tions are met, 15 U. S. C. §1226(a)(2); or that “[n]o predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable” in other circumstances, 7 U. S. C. §26(n)(2); 12 U. S. C. §5567(d)(2); or that requiring a party to arbitrate is “unlawful” in other circumstances yet, 10 U. S. C. §987(e)(3). The fact that we have nothing like that here is further evidence that Section 7 does nothing to address the question of class and collective actions.
In response, the employees offer this slight reply. They suggest that the NLRA doesn’t discuss any particular class and collective action procedures because it merely confers a right to use existing procedures provided by statute or rule, “on the same terms as [they are] made available to everyone else.” Brief for Respondent in No. 16–285, p. 53, n. 10. But of course the NLRA doesn’t say even that much. And, besides, if the parties really take existing class and collective action rules as they find them, they surely take them subject to the limitations inherent in those rules—including the principle that parties may (as here) contract to depart from them in favor of individualized arbitration procedures of their own design.
Still another contextual clue yields the same message. The employees’ underlying causes of action involve their wages and arise not under the NLRA but under an en- tirely different statute, the Fair Labor Standards Act. The FLSA allows employees to sue on behalf of “themselves and other employees similarly situated,” 29 U. S. C. §216(b), and it’s precisely this sort of collective action the employees before us wish to pursue. Yet they do not offer the seemingly more natural suggestion that the FLSA overcomes the Arbitration Act to permit their class and collective actions. Why not? Presumably because this Court held decades ago that an identical collective action scheme (in fact, one borrowed from the FLSA) does not displace the Arbitration Act or prohibit individualized arbitration proceedings. Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U. S. 20, 32 (1991) (discussing Age Discrimination in Employment Act). In fact, it turns out that “[e]very circuit to consider the question” has held that the FLSA allows agreements for individualized arbitration. Alternative Entertainment, 858 F. 3d, at 413 (opinion of Sutton, J.) (collecting cases). Faced with that obstacle, the employees are left to cast about elsewhere for help. And so they have cast in this direction, suggesting that one statute (the NLRA) steps in to dictate the procedures for claims under a different statute (the FLSA), and thereby overrides the commands of yet a third statute (the Arbitration Act). It’s a sort of interpretive triple bank shot, and just stating the theory is enough to raise a judicial eyebrow.
Perhaps worse still, the employees’ theory runs afoul of the usual rule that Congress “does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions—it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468 (2001). Union organization and collective bargaining in the workplace are the bread and butter of the NLRA, while the particulars of dispute resolution procedures in Article III courts or arbitration proceedings are usually left to other statutes and rules—not least the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Arbitration Act, and the FLSA. It’s more than a little doubtful that Congress would have tucked into the mousehole of Section 7’s catchall term an elephant that tramples the work done by these other laws; flattens the parties’ contracted-for dispute resolution procedures; and seats the Board as supreme superintendent of claims arising under a statute it doesn’t even administer.
Nor does it help to fold yet another statute into the mix. At points, the employees suggest that the Norris-LaGuardia Act, a precursor of the NLRA, also renders their arbitration agreements unenforceable. But the Norris-LaGuardia Act adds nothing here. It declares “[un]enforceable” contracts that conflict with its policy of protecting workers’ “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” 29 U. S. C. §§102, 103. That is the same policy the NLRA advances and, as we’ve seen, it does not conflict with Congress’s statutory directions favoring arbitration. See also Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S. 235 (1970) (holding that the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s anti-injunction provisions do not bar enforcement of arbitration agreements).
What all these textual and contextual clues indicate, our precedents confirm. In many cases over many years, this Court has heard and rejected efforts to conjure conflicts between the Arbitration Act and other federal statutes. In fact, this Court has rejected every such effort to date (save one temporary exception since overruled), with statutes ranging from the Sherman and Clayton Acts to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Credit Repair Organizations Act, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Italian Colors, 570 U. S. 228; Gilmer, 500 U. S. 20; CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 565 U. S. 95 (2012); Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477 (1989) (over- ruling Wilko v. Swan, 346 U. S. 427 (1953)); Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U. S. 220 (1987). Throughout, we have made clear that even a statute’s express provision for collective legal actions does not necessarily mean that it precludes “ ‘individual attempts at conciliation’ ” through arbitration. Gilmer, supra, at 32. And we’ve stressed that the absence of any specific statutory discussion of arbitration or class actions is an important and telling clue that Congress has not displaced the Arbitration Act. CompuCredit, supra, at 103–104; McMahon, supra, at 227; Italian Colors, supra, at 234. Given so much precedent pointing so strongly in one direction, we do not see how we might faithfully turn the other way here.
Consider a few examples. In Italian Colors, this Court refused to find a conflict between the Arbitration Act and the Sherman Act because the Sherman Act (just like the NLRA) made “no mention of class actions” and was adopted before Rule 23 introduced its exception to the “usual rule” of “individual” dispute resolution. 570 U. S., at 234 (internal quotation marks omitted). In Gilmer, this Court “had no qualms in enforcing a class waiver in an arbitration agreement even though” the Age Discrimination in Employment Act “expressly permitted collective legal actions.” Italian Colors, supra, at 237 (citing Gilmer, supra, at 32). And in CompuCredit, this Court refused to find a conflict even though the Credit Repair Organizations Act expressly provided a “right to sue,” “repeated[ly]” used the words “action ” and “court” and “class action,” and even declared “[a]ny waiver” of the rights it provided to be “void.” 565 U. S., at 99–100 (internal quotation marks omitted). If all the statutes in all those cases did not provide a congressional command sufficient to displace the Arbitration Act, we cannot imagine how we might hold that the NLRA alone and for the first time does so today.
The employees rejoin that our precedential story is complicated by some of this Court’s cases interpreting Section 7 itself. But, as it turns out, this Court’s Section 7 cases have usually involved just what you would expect from the statute’s plain language: efforts by employees related to organizing and collective bargaining in the workplace, not the treatment of class or collective actions in court or arbitration proceedings. See, e.g., NLRB v. Washington Aluminum Co., 370 U. S. 9 (1962) (walkout to protest workplace conditions); NLRB v. Textile Workers, 409 U. S. 213 (1972) (resignation from union and refusal to strike); NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U. S. 251 (1975) (request for union representation at disciplinary interview). Neither do the two cases the employees cite prove otherwise. In Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U. S. 556, 558 (1978), we simply addressed the question whether a union’s distribution of a newsletter in the workplace qualified as a protected concerted activity. We held it did, noting that it was “undisputed that the union undertook the distribution in order to boost its support and improve its bargaining position in upcoming contract negotiations,” all part of the union’s “ ‘continuing organizational efforts.’ ” Id., at 575, and n. 24. In NLRB v. City Disposal Systems, Inc., 465 U. S. 822, 831–832 (1984), we held only that an employee’s assertion of a right under a collective bargaining agreement was protected, reasoning that the collective bargaining “process—beginning with the organization of the union, continuing into the negotiation of a collective-bargaining agreement, and extending through the enforcement of the agreement—is a single, collective activ- ity.” Nothing in our cases indicates that the NLRA guarantees class and collective action procedures, let alone for claims arising under different statutes and despite the express (and entirely unmentioned) teachings of the Arbitration Act.
That leaves the employees to try to make something of our dicta. The employees point to a line in Eastex observing that “it has been held” by other courts and the Board “that the ‘mutual aid or protection’ clause protects employees from retaliation by their employers when they seek to improve working conditions through resort to administrative and judicial forums.” 437 U. S., at 565–566; see also Brief for National Labor Relations Board in No. 16–307, p. 15 (citing similar Board decisions). But even on its own terms, this dicta about the holdings of other bodies does not purport to discuss what procedures an employee might be entitled to in litigation or arbitration. Instead this passage at most suggests only that “resort to administrative and judicial forums” isn’t “entirely unprotected.” Id., at 566. Indeed, the Court proceeded to explain that it did not intend to “address . . . the question of what may constitute ‘concerted’ activities in this [litigation] context.” Ibid., n. 15. So even the employees’ dicta, when viewed fairly and fully, doesn’t suggest that individualized dispute resolution procedures might be insufficient and collective procedures might be mandatory. Neither should this come as a surprise given that not a single one of the lower court or Board decisions Eastex discussed went so far as to hold that Section 7 guarantees a right to class or collective action procedures. As we’ve seen, the Board did not purport to discover that right until 2012, and no federal appellate court accepted it until 2016. See D. R. Horton, 357 N. L. R. B. 2277; 823 F. 3d 1147 (case below in No. 16–285).
With so much against them in the statute and our precedent, the employees end by seeking shelter in Chevron. Even if this Court doesn’t see what they see in Section 7, the employees say we must rule for them anyway because of the deference this Court owes to an administrative agency’s interpretation of the law. To be sure, the employees do not wish us to defer to the general counsel’s judgment in 2010 that the NLRA and the Arbitration Act coexist peaceably; they wish us to defer instead to the Board’s 2012 opinion suggesting the NLRA displaces the Arbitration Act. No party to these cases has asked us to reconsider Chevron deference. Cf. SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu, ante, at 11. But even under Chevron’s terms, no deference is due. To show why, it suffices to outline just a few of the most obvious reasons.
The Chevron Court justified deference on the premise that a statutory ambiguity represents an “implicit” delegation to an agency to interpret a “statute which it administers.” 467 U. S., at 841, 844. Here, though, the Board hasn’t just sought to interpret its statute, the NLRA, in isolation; it has sought to interpret this statute in a way that limits the work of a second statute, the Arbitration Act. And on no account might we agree that Congress implicitly delegated to an agency authority to address the meaning of a second statute it does not administer. One of Chevron’s essential premises is simply missing here.
It’s easy, too, to see why the “reconciliation” of distinct statutory regimes “is a matter for the courts,” not agencies. Gordon v. New York Stock Exchange, Inc., 422 U. S. 659, 685–686 (1975). An agency eager to advance its statutory mission, but without any particular interest in or expertise with a second statute, might (as here) seek to diminish the second statute’s scope in favor of a more expansive interpretation of its own—effectively “ ‘bootstrap[ping] itself into an area in which it has no jurisdiction.’ ” Adams Fruit Co. v. Barrett, 494 U. S. 638, 650 (1990). All of which threatens to undo rather than honor legislative intentions. To preserve the balance Congress struck in its statutes, courts must exercise independent interpretive judgment. See Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, 535 U. S. 137, 144 (2002) (noting that this Court has “never deferred to the Board’s remedial preferences where such preferences potentially trench upon federal statutes and policies unrelated to the NLRA”).
Another justification the Chevron Court offered for deference is that “policy choices” should be left to Executive Branch officials “directly accountable to the people.” 467 U. S., at 865. But here the Executive seems of two minds, for we have received competing briefs from the Board and from the United States (through the Solicitor General) disputing the meaning of the NLRA. And whatever argument might be mustered for deferring to the Executive on grounds of political accountability, surely it becomes a garble when the Executive speaks from both sides of its mouth, articulating no single position on which it might be held accountable. See Hemel & Nielson, Chevron Step One-and-a-Half, 84 U. Chi. L. Rev. 757, 808 (2017) (“If the theory undergirding Chevron is that voters should be the judges of the executive branch’s policy choices, then presumably the executive branch should have to take ownership of those policy choices so that voters know whom to blame (and to credit)”). In these circumstances, we will not defer.
Finally, the Chevron Court explained that deference is not due unless a “court, employing traditional tools of statutory construction,” is left with an unresolved ambiguity. 467 U. S., at 843, n. 9. And that too is missing: the canon against reading conflicts into statutes is a traditional tool of statutory construction and it, along with the other traditional canons we have discussed, is more than up to the job of solving today’s interpretive puzzle. Where, as here, the canons supply an answer, “Chevron leaves the stage.” Alternative Entertainment, 858 F. 3d, at 417 (opinion of Sutton, J.).
The dissent sees things a little bit differently. In its view, today’s decision ushers us back to the Lochner era when this Court regularly overrode legislative policy judgments. The dissent even suggests we have resur- rected the long-dead “yellow dog” contract. Post, at 3–17, 30 (opinion of Ginsburg , J.). But like most apocalyptic warnings, this one proves a false alarm. Cf. L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 435 (1978) (“ ‘Lochnerizing’ has become so much an epithet that the very use of the label may obscure attempts at understanding”).
Our decision does nothing to override Congress’s policy judgments. As the dissent recognizes, the legislative policy embodied in the NLRA is aimed at “safeguard[ing], first and foremost, workers’ rights to join unions and to engage in collective bargaining.” Post, at 8. Those rights stand every bit as strong today as they did yesterday. And rather than revive “yellow dog” contracts against union organizing that the NLRA outlawed back in 1935, today’s decision merely declines to read into the NLRA a novel right to class action procedures that the Board’s own general counsel disclaimed as recently as 2010.
Instead of overriding Congress’s policy judgments, today’s decision seeks to honor them. This much the dissent surely knows. Shortly after invoking the specter of Lochner, it turns around and criticizes the Court for trying too hard to abide the Arbitration Act’s “ ‘liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements,’ ” Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U. S. 79, 83 (2002), saying we “ ‘ski’ ” too far down the “ ‘slippery slope’ ” of this Court’s arbitration precedent, post, at 23. But the dissent’s real complaint lies with the mountain of precedent itself. The dissent spends page after page relitigating our Arbitration Act precedents, rehashing arguments this Court has heard and rejected many times in many cases that no party has asked us to revisit. Compare post, at 18–23, 26 (criticizing Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614 (1985), Gilmer, 500 U. S. 20, Circuit City, 532 U. S. 105, Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333, Italian Colors, 570 U. S. 228, and CompuCredit, 565 U. S. 95), with Mitsubishi, supra, at 645–650 (Stevens, J., dissenting), Gilmer, supra, at 36, 39–43 (Stevens, J., dissenting), Circuit City, supra, at 124–129 (Stevens, J., dissenting), Concepcion, supra, at 357–367 ( Breyer, J. , dissenting), Italian Colors, supra, at 240–253 ( Kagan, J., dissenting), and CompuCredit, supra, at 116–117 ( Ginsburg, J. , dissenting).
When at last it reaches the question of applying our precedent, the dissent offers little, and understandably so. Our precedent clearly teaches that a contract defense “conditioning the enforceability of certain arbitration agreements on the availability of classwide arbitration procedures” is inconsistent with the Arbitration Act and its saving clause. Concepcion, supra, at 336 (opinion of the Court). And that, of course, is exactly what the employees’ proffered defense seeks to do.
Nor is the dissent’s reading of the NLRA any more available to us than its reading of the Arbitration Act. The dissent imposes a vast construction on Section 7’s language. Post, at 9. But a statute’s meaning does not always “turn solely” on the broadest imaginable “definitions of its component words.” Yates v. United States, 574 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 7). Linguistic and statutory context also matter. We have offered an extensive explanation why those clues support our reading today. By contrast, the dissent rests its interpretation on legislative history. Post, at 3–5; see also post, at 19–21. But legislative history is not the law. “It is the business of Congress to sum up its own debates in its legislation,” and once it enacts a statute “ ‘[w]e do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means.’ ” Schwegmann Brothers v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U. S. 384, 396, 397 (1951) (Jackson, J., concurring) (quoting Justice Holmes). Besides, when it comes to the legislative history here, it seems Congress “did not discuss the right to file class or consolidated claims against employers.” D. R. Horton, 737 F. 3d, at 361. So the dissent seeks instead to divine messages from congressional commentary directed to different questions altogether—a project that threatens to “substitute [the Court] for the Congress.” Schwegmann, supra, at 396.
Nor do the problems end there. The dissent proceeds to argue that its expansive reading of the NLRA conflicts with and should prevail over the Arbitration Act. The NLRA leaves the Arbitration Act without force, the dissent says, because it provides the more “pinpointed” direction. Post, at 25. Even taken on its own terms, though, this argument quickly faces trouble. The dissent says the NLRA is the more specific provision because it supposedly “speaks directly to group action by employees,” while the Arbitration Act doesn’t speak to such actions. Ibid. But the question before us is whether courts must enforce particular arbitration agreements according to their terms. And it’s the Arbitration Act that speaks directly to the enforceability of arbitration agreements, while the NLRA doesn’t mention arbitration at all. So if forced to choose between the two, we might well say the Arbitration Act offers the more on-point instruction. Of course, there is no need to make that call because, as our precedents demand, we have sought and found a persuasive interpretation that gives effect to all of Congress’s work, not just the parts we might prefer.
Ultimately, the dissent retreats to policy arguments. It argues that we should read a class and collective action right into the NLRA to promote the enforcement of wage and hour laws. Post, at 26–30. But it’s altogether unclear why the dissent expects to find such a right in the NLRA rather than in statutes like the FLSA that actually regulate wages and hours. Or why we should read the NLRA as mandating the availability of class or collective actions when the FLSA expressly authorizes them yet allows parties to contract for bilateral arbitration instead. 29 U. S. C. §216(b); Gilmer, supra, at 32. While the dissent is no doubt right that class actions can enhance enforcement by “spread[ing] the costs of litigation,” post, at 9, it’s also well known that they can unfairly “plac[e] pressure on the defendant to settle even unmeritorious claims,” Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P. A. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 559 U. S. 393, 445, n. 3 (2010) ( Ginsburg, J., dissenting). The respective merits of class actions and private arbitration as means of enforcing the law are questions constitution- ally entrusted not to the courts to decide but to the policy- makers in the political branches where those questions remain hotly contested. Just recently, for example, one federal agency banned individualized arbitration agree ments it blamed for underenforcement of certain laws, only to see Congress respond by immediately repealing that rule. See 82 Fed. Reg. 33210 (2017) (cited post, at 28, n. 15); Pub. L. 115–74, 131 Stat. 1243. This Court is not free to substitute its preferred economic policies for those chosen by the people’s representatives. That, we had always understood, was Lochner’s sin.
The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written. While Congress is of course always free to amend this judgment, we see nothing suggesting it did so in the NLRA—much less that it manifested a clear intention to displace the Arbitration Act. Because we can easily read Congress’s statutes to work in harmony, that is where our duty lies. The judgments in Epic, No. 16–285, and Ernst & Young, No. 16–300, are reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The judgment in Murphy Oil, No. 16–307, is affirmed.