Access to justice? Not when corporations can write the rules.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court delivered an "unconscionable" blow to consumers when it preempted state law to say that corporations can ban class actions within the insidious forced arbitration clauses in their contracts with consumers and employees. As a result, corporations can force consumers and employees into individual arbitration while forbidding them to join their claims in class arbitration and class actions. The pro-business decision essentially closes the door for consumers and employees to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable. It’s way past time for Congress to step up and fix this problem. It should ban forced arbitration clauses from consumer and non-union employee contracts.

The Concepcion decision has attracted significant news coverage:

Public Citizen’s Deepak Gupta, the lawyer who argued on behalf of the Concepcions, issued a statement on the decision.

In a Huffington Post piece, Public Citizen’s David Arkush says that the U.S. Supreme Court now allows corporations to literally write their own rules in their contracts to the detriment of consumers and employees.

Additional media coverage is documented on the Consumer Law & Policy blog.