Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (2022) 596 U.S. 639

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PRELIMINARY PRINT 
Volume 596 U. S. Part 2 
Pages 639–665 
OFFICIAL REPORTS 
OF 
THE SUPREME COURT 
June 15, 2022 
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 
reporter of decisions 
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NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before 
the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter 
of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, 
pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors. 



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OCTOBER TERM, 2021 
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VIKING RIVER CRUISES, INC. v. MORIANA 
certiorari to the court of appeal of california, 
second appellate district 
No. 20–1573. Argued March 30, 2022—Decided June 15, 2022 
The question for decision is whether the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U. S. C. 
§1 et seq., preempts a rule of California law that invalidates contractual 
waivers of the right to assert representative claims under California's 
Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004, Cal. Lab. Code 
§ 2698 et seq. PAGA enlists employees as private attorneys general to 
enforce California labor law. By its terms, PAGA authorizes any “ag­
grieved employee” to initiate an action against a former employer “on 
behalf of himself or herself and other current or former employees” to 
obtain civil penalties that previously could have been recovered only by 
the State in an enforcement action brought by California's Labor and 
Workforce Development Agency (LWDA). California precedent holds 
that a PAGA suit is a “ `representative action' ” in which the employee 
plaintiff sues as an “ `agent or proxy' ” of the State. Iskanian v. CLS 
Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348, 380. California precedent 
also interprets the statute to contain what is effectively a rule of claim 
joinder—allowing a party to unite multiple claims against an opposing 
party in a single action. An employee with PAGA standing may “seek 
any civil penalties the state can, including penalties for violations involv­
ing employees other than the PAGA litigant herself.” ZB, N. A. v. Su­
perior Court, 8 Cal. 5th 175, 185. 
Respondent Angie Moriana fled a PAGA action against her former 
employer Viking River Cruises, alleging a California Labor Code viola­
tion. She also asserted a wide array of other violations allegedly sus­
tained by other Viking employees. Moriana's employment contract 
with Viking contained a mandatory arbitration agreement. Important 
here, that agreement contained both a “Class Action Waiver”—provid­
ing that the parties could not bring any dispute as a class, collective, 
or representative action under PAGA—and a severability clause—spec­
ifying that if the waiver was found invalid, such a dispute would pre­
sumptively be litigated in court. Under the severability clause, any 
“portion” of the waiver that remained valid would be “enforced in 
arbitration.” Viking moved to compel arbitration of Moriana's individ­
ual PAGA claim and to dismiss her other PAGA claims. Applying Cali­
fornia's Iskanian precedent, the California courts denied that motion, 
holding that categorical waivers of PAGA standing are contrary to Cali­



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fornia policy and that PAGA claims cannot be split into arbitrable “indi­
vidual” claims and nonarbitrable “representative” claims. This Court 
granted certiorari to decide whether the FAA preempts the California 
rule. 
Held: The FAA preempts the rule of Iskanian insofar as it precludes divi­
sion of PAGA actions into individual and non-individual claims through 
an agreement to arbitrate. Pp. 649–663. 
(a) Based on the principle that “[a]rbitration is strictly `a matter of 
consent,' ” Granite Rock Co. v. Teamsters, 561 U. S. 287, 299, this Court 
has held that “a party may not be compelled under the FAA to submit 
to class arbitration unless there is a contractual basis for concluding that 
the party agreed to do so,” Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l 
Corp., 559 U. S. 662, 684. Because class-action arbitration mandates 
procedural changes that are inconsistent with the individualized and 
informal mode of bilateral arbitration contemplated by the FAA, see 
AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333, 347, class procedures 
cannot be imposed by state law without presenting unwilling parties 
with an unacceptable choice between being compelled to arbitrate using 
such procedures and forgoing arbitration all together. 
Viking contends that the Court's FAA precedents require enforce­
ment of contractual provisions waiving the right to bring PAGA actions 
because PAGA creates a form of class or collective proceeding. If this 
is correct, Iskanian's prohibition on PAGA waivers presents parties 
with an impermissible choice: Either arbitrate disputes using a form of 
class procedures, or do not arbitrate at all. Moriana maintains that any 
confict between Iskanian and the FAA is illusory because PAGA cre­
ates nothing more than a substantive cause of action. 
This Court disagrees with both characterizations of the statute. Mo­
riana's premise that PAGA creates a unitary private cause of action is 
irreconcilable with the structure of the statute and the ordinary legal 
meaning of the word “claim.” A PAGA action asserting multiple viola­
tions under California's Labor Code affecting a range of different em­
ployees does not constitute “a single claim” in even the broadest possible 
sense. Viking's position, on the other hand, elides important structural 
differences between PAGA actions and class actions. A class-action 
plaintiff can raise a multitude of claims because he or she represents a 
multitude of absent individuals; a PAGA plaintiff, by contrast, repre­
sents a single principal, the LWDA, that has a multitude of claims. As 
a result, PAGA suits exhibit virtually none of the procedural character­
istics of class actions. 
This Court's FAA precedents treat bilateral arbitration as the proto­
type of the individualized and informal form of arbitration protected 



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from undue state interference by the FAA. See, e. g., Epic Systems 
Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U. S. –––, –––. Viking posits that a proceeding is 
“bilateral” only if it involves two and only two parties and “is conducted 
by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” Wal-Mart 
Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. 338, 348. Thus, Iskanian's prohibition 
on PAGA waivers is inconsistent with the FAA because PAGA creates 
an intrinsically representational form of action and Iskanian requires 
parties either to arbitrate in that format or forgo arbitration altogether. 
This Court disagrees. Nothing in the FAA establishes a categorical 
rule mandating enforcement of waivers of standing to assert claims on 
behalf of absent principals. Non-class representative actions in which 
a single agent litigates on behalf of a single principal necessarily deviate 
from the strict ideal of bilateral dispute resolution posited by Viking, 
but this Court has never held that the FAA imposes a duty on States 
to render all forms of representative standing waivable by contract or 
that such suits deviate from the norm of bilateral arbitration. Unlike 
procedures distinctive to multiparty litigation, single-principal, single-
agent representative actions are “bilateral” in two registers: They in­
volve the rights of only the absent real party in interest and the defend­
ant, and litigation need only be conducted by the agent-plaintiff and the 
defendant. Nothing in this Court's precedent suggests that in enacting 
the FAA, Congress intended to require States to reshape their agency 
law governing who can assert claims on behalf of whom to ensure that 
parties will never have to arbitrate disputes in a proceeding that devi­
ates from bilateral arbitration in the strictest sense. Pp. 649–659. 
(b) PAGA's built-in mechanism of claim joinder is in confict with the 
FAA. Iskanian's prohibition on contractual division of PAGA actions 
into constituent claims unduly circumscribes the freedom of parties to 
determine “the issues subject to arbitration” and “the rules by which 
they will arbitrate,” Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 587 U. S. –––, –––, and 
does so in a way that violates the fundamental principle that “arbitra­
tion is a matter of consent,” Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 684. For that 
reason, state law cannot condition the enforceability of an agreement to 
arbitrate on the availability of a procedural mechanism that would per­
mit a party to expand the scope of the anticipated arbitration by intro­
ducing claims that the parties did not jointly agree to arbitrate. A 
state rule imposing an expansive rule of joinder in the arbitral context 
would defeat the ability of parties to control which claims are subject 
to arbitration by permitting parties to superadd new claims to the pro­
ceeding, regardless of whether the agreement committed those claims 
to arbitration. When made compulsory by way of Iskanian, PAGA's 
joinder rule functions in exactly this way. The effect is to coerce par­
ties into withholding PAGA claims from arbitration. Iskanian's indi­



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visibility rule effectively coerces parties to opt for a judicial forum 
rather than “forgo[ing] the procedural rigor and appellate review of the 
courts to realize the benefts of private dispute resolution.” Stolt-
Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 685. Pp. 659–662. 
(c) Under this Courts holding, Iskanian's prohibition on wholesale 
waivers of PAGA claims is not preempted by the FAA. But Iskanian's 
rule that PAGA actions cannot be divided into individual and non-
individual claims is preempted, so Viking was entitled to compel arbitra­
tion of Moriana's individual claim. PAGA provides no mechanism to 
enable a court to adjudicate non-individual PAGA claims once an individ­
ual claim has been committed to a separate proceeding. And under 
PAGA's standing requirement, a plaintiff has standing to maintain non-
individual PAGA claims in an action only by virtue of also maintaining 
an individual claim in that action. As a result, Moriana would lack stat­
utory standing to maintain her non-individual claims in court, and the 
correct course was to dismiss her remaining claims. Pp. 662–663. 
Reversed and remanded. 
Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Breyer, Soto-
mayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch, JJ., joined, in which Roberts, C. J., joined 
as to Parts I and III, and in which Kavanaugh and Barrett, JJ., joined 
as to Part III. Sotomayor, J., fled a concurring opinion, post, p. 663. 
Barrett, J., fled an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the 
judgment, in which Kavanaugh, J., joined, and in which Roberts, C. J., 
joined as to all but the footnote, post, p. 664. Thomas, J., fled a dissenting 
opinion, post, p. 665. 
Paul D. Clement argued the cause for petitioner. With 
him on the briefs were George W. Hicks, Jr., and Michael 
D. Lieberman. 
Scott L. Nelson argued the cause for respondent. With 
him on the brief were Kevin T. Barnes, Gregg Lander, and 
Michael Rubin.* 
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the California 
Business and Industrial Alliance by C. Boyden Gray and Jonathan Berry; 
for the California New Car Dealers Association by Anna-Rose Mathieson 
and Susan Yorke; for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of 
America et al. by Andrew J. Pincus, Archis A. Parasharami, Daniel E. 
Jones, Daryl Joseffer, Paul Lettow, Karen R. Harned, and Elizabeth Mil­
ito; for the Civil Justice Association of California by Fred J. Hiestand; for 
the Employers Group by Anton Metlitsky, Apalla Chopra, Adam Karr, 
and Jason Zarrow; for the Restaurant Law Center by Todd B. Scherwin 



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Opinion of the Court 
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court.† 
We granted certiorari in this case to decide whether the 
Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., pre­
empts a rule of California law that invalidates contractual 
waivers of the right to assert representative claims under 
California's Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 
2004. Cal. Lab. Code Ann. § 2698 et seq. (West 2022). 
I 
A 
The California Legislature enacted the Labor Code Pri­
vate Attorneys General Act (PAGA) to address a perceived 
defcit in the enforcement of the State's Labor Code. Cali-
and Angelo I. Amador; for the Retail Litigation Center, Inc., et al. by 
Thomas C. Goldstein, Erica Oleszczuk Evans, and Deborah White; for 
Uber Technologies, Inc., et al. by Theane Evangelis, Blaine H. Evanson, 
and Bradley J. Hamburger; and for the Washington Legal Foundation 
et al. by Peder K. Batalden, Felix Shafr, John F. Querio, Cory L. An­
drews, John M. Masslon II, and Lawrence S. Ebner. 
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the State of 
California by Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California, Michael J. Mon­
gan, Solicitor General, Janill L. Richards, Principal Deputy Solicitor Gen­
eral, and Nicole Welindt, Associate Deputy Solicitor General; for the 
American Association for Justice by Matthew W. H. Wessler; for the Amer­
ican Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations by 
Harold Craig Becker and Matthew J. Ginsburg; for the California Employ­
ment Lawyers' Association et al. by Monique Olivier and Catherine 
Ruckelshaus; for California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc., et al. by Cynthia 
L. Rice and Verónica Meléndez; for Public Justice by Ellen Noble, Karla 
Gilbride, and Leslie A. Brueckner; for the Taxpayers Against Fraud Edu­
cation Fund by Colette G. Matzzie; for Tracy Chen by Mark F. Humenik; 
and for Steve Chou by Chris Baker. 
Briefs of amici curiae were fled for the California Employment Law 
Council by Richard H. Rahm, Paul Grossman, and Paul W. Cane, Jr.; for 
Civil Procedure and Arbitration Law Professors by Gary B. Friedman 
and Myriam Gilles; for the National Academy of Arbitrators by Matthew 
W. Finkin and Barry Winograd; and for Imre S. Szalai by Mr. Szalai, pro se. 
†The Chief Justice joins Parts I and III of this opinion. 



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fornia's Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) 
had the authority to bring enforcement actions to impose 
civil penalties on employers for violations of many of the 
code's provisions. But the legislature believed the LWDA 
did not have suffcient resources to reach the appropriate 
level of compliance, and budgetary constraints made it im­
possible to achieve an adequate level of fnancing. The legis­
lature thus decided to enlist employees as private attorneys 
general to enforce California labor law, with the understand­
ing that labor-law enforcement agencies were to retain pri­
macy over private enforcement efforts. 
By its terms, PAGA authorizes any “aggrieved employee” 
to initiate an action against a former employer “on behalf of 
himself or herself and other current or former employees” to 
obtain civil penalties that previously could have been recov­
ered only by the State in an LWDA enforcement action. 
Cal. Lab. Code Ann. § 2699(a). As the text of the statute 
indicates, PAGA limits statutory standing to “aggrieved em­
ployees”—a term defned to include “any person who was 
employed by the alleged violator and against whom one or 
more of the alleged violations was committed.” § 2699(c). 
To bring suit, however, an employee must also exhaust ad­
ministrative remedies. That entails providing notice to 
the employer and the LWDA of the violations alleged and 
the supporting facts and theories. § 2699.3(a)(1)(A). If the 
LWDA fails to respond or initiate an investigation within a 
specifed timeframe, the employee may bring suit. § 2699.3(a) 
(2). In any successful PAGA action, the LWDA is entitled 
to 75 percent of the award. § 2699(i). The remaining 25 
percent is distributed among the employees affected by the 
violations at issue. Ibid. 
California law characterizes PAGA as creating a “type of 
qui tam action,” 1 Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, 
1As we have explained, “qui tam” is the short form of the Latin phrase 
“qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur”— 
meaning “ `who pursues this action on our Lord the King's behalf as well 
as his own.' ” Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States 
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LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348, 382, 327 P. 3d 129, 148 (2014). Al­
though the statute's language suggests that an “aggrieved 
employee” sues “on behalf of himself or herself and other 
current or former employees,” § 2699(a), California precedent 
holds that a PAGA suit is a “ `representative action' ” in 
which the employee plaintiff sues as an “ `agent or proxy' ” 
of the State. Id., at 380, 327 P. 3d, at 147 (quoting Arias v. 
Superior Court, 46 Cal. 4th 969, 986, 209 P. 3d 923, 933 
(2009)). 
As the California courts conceive of it, the State “is always 
the real party in interest in the suit.” Iskanian, 59 Cal. 4th, 
at 382, 327 P. 3d, at 148.2 
The primary function of PAGA is 
ex rel. Stevens, 529 U. S. 765, 768, n. 1 (2000). Qui tam actions “appear 
to have originated around the end of the 13th century, when private indi­
viduals who had suffered injury began bringing actions in the royal courts 
on both their own and the Crown's behalf ” and became more of a rarity 
as “royal courts began to extend jurisdiction to suits involving wholly 
private wrongs.” Id., at 774–775. 
2 The extent to which PAGA plaintiffs truly act as agents of the State 
rather than complete assignees is disputed. See Magadia v. Wal-Mart 
Assocs., Inc., 999 F. 3d 668, 677 (CA9 2021) (holding that PAGA “lacks the 
procedural controls necessary to ensure that California” retains “substan­
tial authority over the case” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Agency 
requires control. See Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U. S. 693, 713 (2013). 
But apart from the exhaustion process, the statute does not feature any 
explicit control mechanisms, such as provisions authorizing the State to 
intervene or requiring its approval of settlements. 
That said, California precedent strongly suggests that the State retains 
inherent authority to manage PAGA actions. There is no other obvious 
way to understand California precedent's description of the State as the 
“real party in interest.” See generally 1A Cal. Jur. 3d Actions § 31 (real­
party-in-interest status is based on ownership and control over the cause 
of action). And a theory of total assignment appears inconsistent with 
the fact that employees have no assignable interest in a PAGA claim. See 
Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1756, AFL-CIO v. Superior Court of 
Los Angeles Cty., 46 Cal. 4th 993, 1002, 209 P. 3d 937, 943 (2009) (Amalga­
mated Transit); see also Turrieta v. Lyft, Inc., 69 Cal. App. 5th 955, 972, 
284 Cal. Rptr. 3d 767, 780 (2021) (The employee's “ability to fle PAGA 
claims on behalf of the state does not convert the state's interest into their 
own or render them real parties in interest”). For purposes of this opin­
ion, we assume that PAGA plaintiffs are agents. 
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to delegate a power to employees to assert “the same legal 
right and interest as state law enforcement agencies,” Arias, 
46 Cal. 4th, at 986, 209 P. 3d, at 933. In other words, the 
statute gives employees a right to assert the State's claims 
for civil penalties on a representative basis, but it does not 
create any private rights or private claims for relief. Iskan­
ian, 59 Cal. 4th, at 381, 327 P. 3d, at 148; see also Amalga­
mated Transit, 46 Cal. 4th 993, 1002, 209 P. 3d 937, 943 
(2009). The code provisions enforced through the statute 
establish public duties that are owed to the State, not private 
rights belonging to employees in their “individual capac­
ities.” Iskanian, 59 Cal. 4th, at 381, 327 P. 3d, at 147. 
Other, distinct provisions of the code create individual 
rights, and claims arising from violations of those rights are 
actionable through separate private causes of action for com­
pensatory or statutory damages. Id., at 381–382, 327 P. 3d, 
at 147–148; see also Kim v. Reins Int'l California, Inc., 9 
Cal. 5th 73, 86, 459 P. 3d 1123, 1130 (2020) (“[C]ivil penalties 
recovered on the state's behalf are intended to remediate 
present violations and deter future ones, not to redress em­
ployees' injuries” (internal quotation marks omitted; empha­
sis deleted)). And because PAGA actions are understood to 
involve the assertion of the government's claims on a deriva­
tive basis, the judgment issued in a PAGA action is binding 
on anyone “who would be bound by a judgment in an action 
brought by the government.” Arias, 46 Cal. 4th, at 986, 209 
P. 3d, at 933. 
California precedent also interprets the statute to contain 
what is effectively a rule of claim joinder. Rules of claim 
joinder allow a party to unite multiple claims against an 
opposing party in a single action. See 6A C. Wright, H. 
Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1582 
(3d ed. 2016) (Wright & Miller). PAGA standing has the 
same function. An employee with statutory standing may 
“seek any civil penalties the state can, including penalties for 
violations involving employees other than the PAGA litigant 



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herself.” ZB, N. A. v. Superior Court, 8 Cal. 5th 175, 185, 
448 P. 3d 239, 243–244 (2019). An employee who alleges he 
or she suffered a single violation is entitled to use that viola­
tion as a gateway to assert a potentially limitless number of 
other violations as predicates for liability. This mechanism 
radically expands the scope of PAGA actions. The default 
penalties set by PAGA are $100 for each aggrieved employee 
per pay period for the initial violation and $200 for each ag­
grieved employee per pay period for each subsequent viola­
tion. Cal. Lab. Code Ann. §2699(f)(2). Individually, these 
penalties are modest; but given PAGA's additive dimension, 
low-value claims may easily be welded together into high-
value suits. 
B 
Petitioner Viking River Cruises, Inc. (Viking), is a com­
pany that offers ocean and river cruises around the world. 
When respondent Angie Moriana was hired by Viking as a 
sales representative, she executed an agreement to arbitrate 
any dispute arising out of her employment. The agreement 
contained a “Class Action Waiver” providing that in any ar­
bitral proceeding, the parties could not bring any dispute as 
a class, collective, or representative PAGA action. It also 
contained a severability clause specifying that if the waiver 
was found invalid, any class, collective, representative, or 
PAGA action would presumptively be litigated in court. 
But under that severability clause, if any “portion” of the 
waiver remained valid, it would be “enforced in arbitration.” 
After leaving her position with Viking, Moriana fled a 
PAGA action against Viking in California court. Her com­
plaint contained a claim that Viking had failed to provide her 
with her fnal wages within 72 hours, as required by §§ 101– 
102 of the California Labor Code. But the complaint also 
asserted a wide array of other code violations allegedly sus­
tained by other Viking employees, including violations of 
provisions concerning the minimum wage, overtime, meal 
periods, rest periods, timing of pay, and pay statements. 
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Viking moved to compel arbitration of Moriana's “individual” 
PAGA claim—here meaning the claim that arose from the 
violation she suffered—and to dismiss her other PAGA 
claims. The trial court denied that motion, and the Califor­
nia Court of Appeal affrmed, holding that categorical waiv­
ers of PAGA standing are contrary to state policy and that 
PAGA claims cannot be split into arbitrable individual claims 
and nonarbitrable “representative” claims. 
This ruling was dictated by the California Supreme 
Court's decision in Iskanian. In that case, the court held 
that pre-dispute agreements to waive the right to bring “rep­
resentative” PAGA claims are invalid as a matter of public 
policy. What, precisely, this holding means requires some 
explanation. PAGA's unique features have prompted the 
development of an entire vocabulary unique to the statute, 
but the details, it seems, are still being worked out. An 
unfortunate feature of this lexicon is that it tends to use the 
word “representative” in two distinct ways, and each of 
those uses of the term “representative” is connected with 
one of Iskanian's rules governing contractual waiver of 
PAGA claims. 
In the frst sense, PAGA actions are “representative” in 
that they are brought by employees acting as representa­
tives—that is, as agents or proxies—of the State. But 
PAGA claims are also called “representative” when they are 
predicated on code violations sustained by other employees. 
In the frst sense, “ `every PAGA action is . . . representa­
tive' ” and “[t]here is no individual component to a PAGA 
action,” Kim, 9 Cal. 5th, at 87, 459 P. 3d, at 1131 (quoting 
Iskanian, 59 Cal. 4th, at 387, 327 P. 3d, at 151), because every 
PAGA claim is asserted in a representative capacity. But 
when the word “representative” is used in the second way, 
it makes sense to distinguish “individual” PAGA claims, 
which are premised on Labor Code violations actually sus­
tained by the plaintiff, from “representative” (or perhaps 
quasi-representative) PAGA claims arising out of events in­
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volving other employees. For purposes of this opinion, we 
will use “individual PAGA claim” to refer to claims based on 
code violations suffered by the plaintiff. And we will en­
deavor to be clear about how we are using the term 
“representative.” 
Iskanian's principal rule prohibits waivers of “representa­
tive” PAGA claims in the frst sense. That is, it prevents 
parties from waiving representative standing to bring PAGA 
claims in a judicial or arbitral forum. But Iskanian also 
adopted a secondary rule that invalidates agreements to sep­
arately arbitrate or litigate “individual PAGA claims for 
Labor Code violations that an employee suffered,” on the 
theory that resolving victim-specifc claims in separate arbi­
trations does not serve the deterrent purpose of PAGA. 59 
Cal. 4th, at 383, 327 P. 3d, at 149; see also Kim, 9 Cal. 5th, 
at 88, 459 P. 3d, at 1132 (noting that based on Iskanian, Cali­
fornia courts have uniformly “rejected efforts to split PAGA 
claims into individual and representative components”). 
In this case, Iskanian's principal prohibition required the 
lower courts to treat the representative-action waiver in the 
agreement between Moriana and Viking as invalid insofar as 
it was construed as a wholesale waiver of PAGA standing. 
The agreement's severability clause, however, allowed en­
forcement of any “portion” of the waiver that remained valid, 
so the agreement still would have permitted arbitration of 
Moriana's individual PAGA claim even if wholesale enforce­
ment was impossible. But because California law prohibits 
division of a PAGA action into constituent claims, the state 
courts refused to compel arbitration of that claim as well. 
We granted certiorari, 595 U. S. ––– (2021), and now reverse. 
II 
The FAA was enacted in response to judicial hostility to 
arbitration. Section 2 of the statute makes arbitration 
agreements “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon 
such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation 
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of any contract.” 9 U. S. C. § 2.3 
As we have interpreted 
it, this provision contains two clauses: An enforcement man­
date, which renders agreements to arbitrate enforceable as 
a matter of federal law, and a saving clause, which permits 
invalidation of arbitration clauses on grounds applicable to 
“any contract.” See AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 
563 U. S. 333, 339–340 (2011); Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 
584 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2018). These clauses jointly estab­
lish “an equal-treatment principle: A court may invalidate an 
arbitration agreement based on `generally applicable con­
tract defenses' like fraud or unconscionability, but not on 
legal rules that `apply only to arbitration or that derive their 
meaning from the fact that an agreement to arbitrate is at 
issue.' ” Kindred Nursing Centers L. P. v. Clark, 581 U. S. 
246, 251 (2017) (quoting Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 339). 
Under that principle, the FAA “preempts any state rule dis­
criminating on its face against arbitration—for example, a 
law `prohibit[ing] outright the arbitration of a particular type 
of claim.' ” Kindred Nursing, 581 U. S., at 251 (quoting Con­
cepcion, 563 U. S., at 341). 
But under our decisions, even rules that are generally ap­
plicable as a formal matter are not immune to preemption by 
the FAA. See Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 587 U. S. –––, ––– 
(2019); Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 343. Section 2's mandate pro­
3 As we have noted, common-law hostility to arbitration “manifested it­
self in a great variety of devices and formulas.” AT&T Mobility LLC v. 
Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333, 342 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). 
Two important devices were the doctrines of ouster and revocability, 
which, respectively, invalidated arbitration clauses as impermissible at­
tempts to “oust” courts of their jurisdiction and permitted parties to 
revoke consent to arbitrate until the moment the arbitrator entered 
an award. See, e. g., Kill v. Hollister, 1 Wils. K. B. 129, 95 Eng. Rep. 532 
(K. B. 1746); Vynior's Case, 77 Co. Rep. 80a, 77 Eng. Rep. 597 (K. B. 1609). 
Another was the rule barring specifc performance as a remedy for breach 
of an arbitration clause. See 21 R. Lord, Williston on Contracts § 57:2 
(4th ed. 2017). Section 2 abrogated these doctrines by making arbitration 
agreements presumptively “valid,” “irrevocable,” and “enforceable.” 
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tects a right to enforce arbitration agreements. That right 
would not be a right to arbitrate in any meaningful sense if 
generally applicable principles of state law could be used to 
transform “traditiona[l] individualized . . . arbitration” into 
the “litigation it was meant to displace” through the imposi­
tion of procedures at odds with arbitration's informal nature. 
Epic Systems, 584 U. S., at –––. See also Concepcion, 563 
U. S., at 351. And that right would not be a right to arbi­
trate based on an agreement if generally applicable law could 
be used to coercively impose arbitration in contravention of 
the “frst principle” of our FAA jurisprudence: that “[a]rbi­
tration is strictly `a matter of consent.' ” Granite Rock Co. 
v. Teamsters, 561 U. S. 287, 299 (2010) (quoting Volt Informa­
tion Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford 
Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 479 (1989)); see also Lamps Plus, 
587 U. S., at –––; Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l 
Corp., 559 U. S. 662, 685 (2010). 
Based on these principles, we have held that “a party may 
not be compelled under the FAA to submit to class arbitra­
tion unless there is a contractual basis for concluding that 
the party agreed to do so.” Id., at 684. See also Lamps 
Plus, 587 U. S., at –––; Epic Systems, 584 U. S., at ––– – –––; 
Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 347–348. The “ `shift from bilat­
eral arbitration to class-action arbitration' ” mandates proce­
dural changes that are inconsistent with the individualized 
and informal mode of arbitration contemplated by the FAA. 
Id., at 347 (quoting Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 686). As a 
result, class procedures cannot be imposed by state law with­
out presenting unwilling parties with an unacceptable choice 
between being compelled to arbitrate using procedures at 
odds with arbitration's traditional form and forgoing arbitra­
tion altogether. Putting parties to that choice is inconsist­
ent with the FAA. 
Viking contends that these decisions require enforcement 
of contractual provisions waiving the right to bring PAGA 
actions because PAGA creates a form of class or collective 
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proceeding. If this is correct, Iskanian's prohibition on 
PAGA waivers presents parties with the same impermissible 
choice as the rules we have invalidated in our decisions con­
cerning class- and collective-action waivers: Either arbitrate 
disputes using a form of class procedure, or do not arbitrate 
at all. 
Moriana offers a very different characterization of the 
statute. As she sees it, any confict between Iskanian and 
the FAA is illusory because PAGA creates nothing more 
than a substantive cause of action. The only thing that is 
distinctive about PAGA, she supposes, is that it allows em­
ployee plaintiffs to increase the available penalties that may 
be awarded in an action by proving additional predicate vio­
lations of the Labor Code. But that does not make a PAGA 
action a class action, because those violations are not distinct 
claims belonging to distinct individuals. Instead, they are 
predicates for expanded liability under a single cause of ac­
tion. In Moriana's view, that means Iskanian invalidates 
waivers of substantive rights, and does not purport to invali­
date anything that can meaningfully be described as an “ar­
bitration agreement.” 4 
4 Moriana declines to defend one of the Iskanian court's own bases for 
holding that the FAA does not mandate enforcement of PAGA waivers. 
The Iskanian court reasoned that a PAGA action lies outside the FAA's 
coverage entirely because § 2 is limited to controversies “arising out of ” 
the contract between the parties, 9 U. S. C. § 2 (emphasis added), and a 
PAGA action “is not a dispute between an employer and an employee 
arising out of their contractual relationship,” but “a dispute between an 
employer and the state.” Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 
Cal. 4th 348, 387, 327 P. 3d 129, 151 (2014). We reject this argument. 
Although the terms of § 2 limit the FAA's enforcement mandate to agree­
ments to arbitrate controversies that “arise out of” the parties' contractual 
relationship, disputes resolved in PAGA actions satisfy this requirement. 
The contractual relationship between the parties is a but-for cause of any 
justiciable legal controversy between the parties under PAGA, and “aris­
ing out of” language normally refers to a causal relationship. See, e. g., 
Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial Dist. Court, 592 U. S. –––, ––– 
(2021). And regardless of whether a PAGA action is in some sense also a 
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We disagree with both characterizations of the statute. 
Moriana is correct that the FAA does not require courts to 
enforce contractual waivers of substantive rights and reme­
dies. The FAA's mandate is to enforce “arbitration agree­
ments.” Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 344 (emphasis added). 
And as we have described it, an arbitration agreement is “a 
specialized kind of forum-selection clause that posits not only 
the situs of suit but also the procedure to be used in resolv­
ing the dispute.” Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S. 
506, 519 (1974); Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-
Plymouth, Inc., 473 U. S. 614, 633 (1985). An arbitration 
agreement thus does not alter or abridge substantive rights; 
it merely changes how those rights will be processed. And 
so we have said that “ `[b]y agreeing to arbitrate a statutory 
claim, a party does not forgo the substantive rights afforded 
by the statute; it only submits to their resolution in an arbi­
tral . . . forum.' ” Preston v. Ferrer, 552 U. S. 346, 359 (2008) 
(quoting Mitsubishi Motors Corp., 473 U. S., at 628). 5 
But Moriana's premise that PAGA creates a unitary pri­
vate cause of action is irreconcilable with the structure of the 
statute and the ordinary legal meaning of the word “claim.” 
California courts interpret PAGA to provide employees with 
delegated authority to assert the State's claims on a repre­
sentative basis, not an individual cause of action. See, e. g., 
Amalgamated Transit, 46 Cal. 4th, at 1003, 209 P. 3d, at 943 
dispute between an employer and the State, nothing in the FAA categori­
cally exempts claims belonging to sovereigns from the scope of § 2. 
5 In briefng before this Court, Viking argued that the principle that 
the FAA does not mandate enforcement of provisions waiving substantive 
rights is limited to federal statutes. This argument is erroneous. The 
basis of this principle is not anything unique about federal statutes. It is 
that the FAA requires only the enforcement of “provision[s]” to settle a 
controversy “by arbitration,” § 2, and not any provision that happens to 
appear in a contract that features an arbitration clause. That is why we 
mentioned this principle in Preston, which concerned claims arising under 
state law. See 552 U. S., at 360 (noting that under the agreement, a party 
“relinquishe[d] no substantive rights . . . California law may accord him”). 
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(PAGA “is simply a procedural statute” that “does not create 
property rights or any other substantive rights”). And a 
PAGA action asserting multiple code violations affecting a 
range of different employees does not constitute “a sin­
gle claim” in even the broadest possible sense, because the 
violations asserted need not even arise from a common 
“transaction” or “nucleus of operative facts.” Lucky Brand 
Dungarees, Inc. v. Marcel Fashions Group, Inc., 590 U. S. 
–––, ––– (2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). 6 
Viking 's position, on the other hand, elides important 
structural differences between PAGA actions and class ac­
tions that preclude any straightforward application of our 
precedents invalidating prohibitions on class-action waivers. 
Class-action procedure allows courts to use a representative 
plaintiff's individual claims as a basis to “adjudicate claims of 
multiple parties at once, instead of in separate suits,” Shady 
Grove Orthopedic Associates, P. A. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 559 
U. S. 393, 408 (2010). This, of course, requires the certifca­
tion of a class. And because class judgments bind absentees 
with respect to their individual claims for relief and are pre­
clusive as to all claims the class could have brought, Cooper 
v. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, 467 U. S. 867, 874 
(1984), “class representatives must at all times adequately 
represent absent class members, and absent [class] members 
must be afforded notice, an opportunity to be heard, and a 
right to opt out of the class.” Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 349. 
And to “ensur[e] that the named plaintiffs are appropriate 
representatives of the class whose claims they wish to liti­
6 California courts sometimes speak as though a PAGA action involves 
the assertion of “a single representative PAGA claim,” Williams v. Supe­
rior Court, 237 Cal. App. 4th 642, 649, 188 Cal. Rptr. 3d 83, 87 (2015). But 
we are not required to take the labels affxed by state courts at face value 
in determining whether state law creates a scheme at odds with federal 
law. See, e. g., Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U. S. 363, 367–368 (1930). And 
in our view, this manner of speaking is another refection of the still-
embryonic character of the language that has grown up around PAGA. 
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gate,” the adjudicator must decide questions of numerosity, 
commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation. 
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U. S. 338, 349 (2011). 
PAGA actions also permit the adjudication of multiple 
claims in a single suit, but their structure is entirely differ­
ent. A class-action plaintiff can raise a multitude of claims 
because he or she represents a multitude of absent individu­
als; a PAGA plaintiff, by contrast, represents a single princi­
pal, the LWDA, that has a multitude of claims. As a result 
of this structural difference, PAGA suits exhibit virtually 
none of the procedural characteristics of class actions. The 
plaintiff does not represent a class of injured individuals, so 
there is no need for certifcation. PAGA judgments are 
binding only with respect to the State's claims, and are not 
binding on nonparty employees as to any individually held 
claims. Arias, 46 Cal. 4th, at 986, 209 P. 3d, at 933–934. 
This obviates the need to consider adequacy of representa­
tion, numerosity, commonality, or typicality. And although 
the statute gives other affected employees a future interest 
in the penalties awarded in an action, that interest does not 
make those employees “parties” in any of the senses in which 
absent class members are, see Devlin v. Scardelletti, 536 
U. S. 1 (2002), or give those employees anything more than 
an inchoate interest in litigation proceeds. See Vermont 
Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Ste­
vens, 529 U. S. 765, 773 (2000) (The “ `right' ” to a share of 
the proceeds of a qui tam action “does not even fully mate­
rialize until the litigation is completed and the relator 
prevails”). 
Because PAGA actions do not adjudicate the individual 
claims of multiple absent third parties, they do not present 
the problems of notice, due process, and adequacy of repre­
sentation that render class arbitration inconsistent with arbi­
tration's traditionally individualized form. See Concepcion, 
563 U. S., at 347–348. Of course, as a practical matter, 
PAGA actions do have something important in common with 
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class actions. Because PAGA plaintiffs represent a princi­
pal with a potentially vast number of claims at its disposal, 
PAGA suits “greatly increas[e] risks to defendants.” Id., at 
350. But our precedents do not hold that the FAA allows 
parties to contract out of anything that might amplify de­
fense risks. Instead, our cases hold that States cannot co­
erce individuals into forgoing arbitration by taking the 
individualized and informal procedures characteristic of tra­
ditional arbitration off the table. Litigation risks are rele­
vant to that inquiry because one way in which state law may 
coerce parties into forgoing their right to arbitrate is by con­
ditioning that right on the use of a procedural format that 
makes arbitration artifcially unattractive. The question, 
then, is whether PAGA contains any procedural mechanism 
at odds with arbitration's basic form. 
Viking suggests an answer. Our FAA precedents treat 
bilateral arbitration as the prototype of the individualized 
and informal form of arbitration protected from undue state 
interference by the FAA. See Epic Systems, 584 U. S., 
at ––– – –––; see also American Express Co. v. Italian Colors 
Restaurant, 570 U. S. 228, 238 (2013); Concepcion, 563 U. S., 
at 347–349; Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 685–686. Viking pos­
its that a proceeding is “bilateral” in the relevant sense if— 
but only if—it involves two and only two parties and the 
arbitration “ `is conducted by and on behalf of the individual 
named parties only.' ” Wal-Mart, 564 U. S., at 348 (quot­
ing Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 700–701 (1979)). 
PAGA actions necessarily deviate from this ideal because 
they involve litigation or arbitration on behalf of an absent 
principal. Viking thus suggests that Iskanian's prohibition 
on PAGA waivers is inconsistent with the FAA because 
PAGA creates an intrinsically representational form of ac­
tion and Iskanian requires parties either to arbitrate in that 
format or forgo arbitration altogether. 
We disagree. Nothing in the FAA establishes a categori­
cal rule mandating enforcement of waivers of standing to 
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assert claims on behalf of absent principals. Non-class rep­
resentative actions in which a single agent litigates on behalf 
of a single principal are part of the basic architecture 
of much of substantive law. Familiar examples include 
shareholder-derivative suits, wrongful-death actions, trustee 
actions, and suits on behalf of infants or incompetent per­
sons. Single-agent, single-principal suits of this kind neces­
sarily deviate from the strict ideal of bilateral dispute resolu­
tion posited by Viking. But we have never held that the 
FAA imposes a duty on States to render all forms of rep­
resentative standing waivable by contract. Nor have we 
suggested that single-agent, single-principal representative 
suits are inconsistent the norm of bilateral arbitration as our 
precedents conceive of it. Instead, we have held that “the 
`changes brought about by the shift from bilateral arbitration 
to class-action arbitration' ” are too fundamental to be im­
posed on parties without their consent. Concepcion, 563 
U. S., at 347–348 (quoting Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 686; em­
phasis added). And we have held that § 2's saving clause 
does not preserve defenses that would allow a party to de­
clare “that a contract is unenforceable just because it re­
quires bilateral arbitration.” Epic Systems, 584 U. S., 
at –––. 
These principles do not mandate the enforcement of waiv­
ers of representative capacity as a categorical rule. Re­
quiring parties to decide whether to arbitrate or litigate a 
single-agent, single-principal action does not produce a shift 
from a situation in which the arbitrator must “resolv[e] a 
single dispute between the parties to a single agreement” 
to one in which he or she must “resolv[e] many disputes 
between hundreds or perhaps even thousands of parties.” 
Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 686. And a proceeding in which 
two and only two parties arbitrate exclusively in their indi­
vidual capacities is not the only thing one might mean by 
“bilateral arbitration.” As we have said, “[t]he label `party' 
does not indicate an absolute characteristic, but rather a con­



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clusion about the applicability of various procedural rules 
that may differ based on context.” Devlin, 536 U. S., at 10. 
Our precedents use the phrase “bilateral arbitration” in op­
position to “class or collective” arbitration, and the problems 
we have identifed in mandatory class arbitration arise from 
procedures characteristic of multiparty representative ac­
tions. Epic Systems, 584 U. S., at –––; see also Italian Col­
ors, 570 U. S., at 238; Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 347–349; Stolt-
Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 685–686. Unlike these kinds of 
actions, single-principal, single-agent representative actions 
are “bilateral” in two registers: They involve the rights of 
only the absent real party in interest and the defendant, 
and litigation need only be conducted by the agent-plaintiff 
and the defendant. This degree of deviation from bilateral 
norms is not alien to traditional arbitral practice, 7 and our 
precedents have never suggested otherwise. See, e. g., 
Marmet Health Care Center, Inc. v. Brown, 565 U. S. 530 
(2012) (per curiam) (invalidating rule categorically barring 
arbitration of wrongful-death actions). 
Nor does a rule prohibiting waiver of representative 
standing declare “that a contract is unenforceable just be­
cause it requires bilateral arbitration.” Epic Systems, 584 
U. S., at –––. Indeed, if the term “bilateral arbitration” is 
used to mean “arbitration in an individual capacity between 
precisely two parties,” a rule prohibiting representative-
capacity waivers cannot invalidate agreements to arbitrate 
on a “bilateral” basis. An agreement that explicitly pro­
vided for “arbitration on a strictly bilateral basis” would, 
under that defnition of the term “bilateral,” categorically 
exclude representative-capacity claims from its coverage. 
Such claims, after all, necessarily involve the representation 
of an absent principal, and thus cannot be arbitrated in a 
7 For example, close corporations have included arbitration clauses in 
negotiated shareholder agreements for many decades. See, e. g., In re 
Carl, 263 App. Div. 887, 32 N. Y. S. 2d 410 (1942); Lumsden v. Lumsden 
Bros. & Taylor Inc., 242 App. Div. 852, 257 N. Y. S. 221 (1934). 
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strictly bilateral proceeding. A rule prohibiting waivers of 
representative standing would not invalidate any agree­
ments that contracted for “bilateral arbitration” in Viking's 
sense—it would simply require parties to choose whether to 
litigate those claims or arbitrate them in a proceeding that 
is not bilateral in every conceivable sense. And while this 
consequence only follows because it is impossible to decide 
representative claims in an arbitration that is “bilateral” in 
every dimension, nothing in our precedent suggests that in 
enacting the FAA, Congress intended to require States to 
reshape their agency law to ensure that parties will never 
have to arbitrate in a proceeding that deviates from “bilat­
eral arbitration” in the strictest sense. If there is a confict 
between California's prohibition on PAGA waivers and the 
FAA, it must derive from a different source. 
III 
We think that such a confict between PAGA's procedural 
structure and the FAA does exist, and that it derives from 
the statute's built-in mechanism of claim joinder. As we 
noted at the outset, that mechanism permits “aggrieved em­
ployees” to use the Labor Code violations they personally 
suffered as a basis to join to the action any claims that could 
have been raised by the State in an enforcement proceeding. 
Iskanian's secondary rule prohibits parties from contracting 
around this joinder device because it invalidates agreements 
to arbitrate only “individual PAGA claims for Labor Code 
violations that an employee suffered,” 59 Cal. 4th, at 383, 327 
P. 3d, at 149. 
This prohibition on contractual division of PAGA actions 
into constituent claims unduly circumscribes the freedom of 
parties to determine “the issues subject to arbitration” and 
“the rules by which they will arbitrate,” Lamps Plus, 587 
U. S., at –––, and does so in a way that violates the funda­
mental principle that “arbitration is a matter of consent,” 
Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 684. The most basic corollary of 
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the principle that arbitration is a matter of consent is that 
“a party can be forced to arbitrate only those issues it spe­
cifcally has agreed to submit to arbitration,” First Options 
of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U. S. 938, 945 (1995). This 
means that parties cannot be coerced into arbitrating a claim, 
issue, or dispute “absent an affrmative `contractual basis for 
concluding that the party agreed to do so.' ” Lamps Plus, 
587 U. S., at ––– (quoting Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 684); see 
also Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 347–348. 
For that reason, state law cannot condition the enforceabil­
ity of an arbitration agreement on the availability of a proce­
dural mechanism that would permit a party to expand the 
scope of the arbitration by introducing claims that the par­
ties did not jointly agree to arbitrate. Rules of claim joinder 
can function in precisely that way. Modern civil procedure 
dispenses with the formalities of the common-law approach 
to claim joinder in favor of almost-unqualified joinder. 
Wright & Miller § 1581. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 
18(a), which permits a party to “join, as independent or alter­
native claims, as many claims as it has against an opposing 
party,” is typical of the modern approach. But the FAA li­
censes contracting parties to depart from standard rules “in 
favor of individualized arbitration procedures of their own 
design,” so parties to an arbitration agreement are not re­
quired to follow the same approach. Epic Systems, 584 
U. S., at –––. And that is true even if bifurcated proceed­
ings are an inevitable result. See, e. g., Dean Witter Rey­
nolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213, 220–221 (1985); Moses H. 
Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 
1, 103 (1983). 
A state rule imposing an expansive rule of joinder in the 
arbitral context would defeat the ability of parties to control 
which claims are subject to arbitration. Such a rule would 
permit parties to superadd new claims to the proceeding, 
regardless of whether the agreement between them com­
mitted those claims to arbitration. Requiring arbitration 
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procedures to include a joinder rule of that kind compels par­
ties to either go along with an arbitration in which the range 
of issues under consideration is determined by coercion 
rather than consent, or else forgo arbitration altogether. 
Either way, the parties are coerced into giving up a 
right they enjoy under the FAA. See Lamps Plus, 587 
U. S., at ––– – –––; Epic Systems, 584 U. S., at ––– – –––; Con­
cepcion, 563 U. S., at 347–351; Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 
684–687. 
When made compulsory by way of Iskanian, the joinder 
rule internal to PAGA functions in exactly this way. Under 
that rule, parties cannot agree to restrict the scope of an 
arbitration to disputes arising out of a particular “ ` “transac­
tion” ' ” or “ `common nucleus of operative facts.' ” Lucky 
Brand, 590 U. S., at –––. If the parties agree to arbitrate 
“individual” PAGA claims based on personally sustained vio­
lations, Iskanian allows the aggrieved employee to abrogate 
that agreement after the fact and demand either judicial pro­
ceedings or an arbitral proceeding that exceeds the scope 
jointly intended by the parties. The only way for parties to 
agree to arbitrate one of an employee's PAGA claims is to 
also “agree” to arbitrate all other PAGA claims in the same 
arbitral proceeding. 
The effect of Iskanian's rule mandating this mechanism is 
to coerce parties into withholding PAGA claims from arbitra­
tion. Liberal rules of claim joinder presuppose a backdrop 
in which litigants assert their own claims and those of a lim­
ited class of other parties who are usually connected with 
the plaintiff by virtue of a distinctive legal relationship— 
such as that between shareholders and a corporation or be­
tween a parent and a minor child. PAGA departs from that 
norm by granting the power to enforce a subset of California 
public law to every employee in the State. This combination 
of standing to act on behalf of a sovereign and mandatory 
freeform joinder allows plaintiffs to unite a massive number 
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“[a]rbitration is poorly suited to the higher stakes” of 
massive-scale disputes of this kind. Concepcion, 563 U. S., 
at 350. The absence of “multilayered review” in arbitral 
proceedings “makes it more likely that errors will go uncor­
rected.” Ibid. And suits featuring a vast number of claims 
entail the same “risk of `in terrorem' settlements that class 
actions entail.” Ibid. As a result, Iskanian's indivisibility 
rule effectively coerces parties to opt for a judicial forum 
rather than “forgo[ing] the procedural rigor and appellate 
review of the courts in order to realize the benefts of private 
dispute resolution.” Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U. S., at 685; see 
also Concepcion, 563 U. S., at 350–351. This result is incom­
patible with the FAA. 
IV 
We hold that the FAA preempts the rule of Iskanian inso­
far as it precludes division of PAGA actions into individual 
and non-individual claims through an agreement to arbitrate. 
This holding compels reversal in this case. The agreement 
between Viking and Moriana purported to waive “repre­
sentative” PAGA claims. Under Iskanian, this provision 
was invalid if construed as a wholesale waiver of PAGA 
claims. And under our holding, that aspect of Iskanian is 
not preempted by the FAA, so the agreement remains in­
valid insofar as it is interpreted in that manner. But the 
severability clause in the agreement provides that if the 
waiver provision is invalid in some respect, any “portion” 
of the waiver that remains valid must still be “enforced in 
arbitration.” Based on this clause, Viking was entitled to 
enforce the agreement insofar as it mandated arbitration of 
Moriana's individual PAGA claim. The lower courts refused 
to do so based on the rule that PAGA actions cannot be di­
vided into individual and non-individual claims. Under our 
holding, that rule is preempted, so Viking is entitled to com­
pel arbitration of Moriana's individual claim. 
The remaining question is what the lower courts should 
have done with Moriana's non-individual claims. Under our 
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holding in this case, those claims may not be dismissed sim­
ply because they are “representative.” Iskanian's rule re­
mains valid to that extent. But as we see it, PAGA provides 
no mechanism to enable a court to adjudicate non-individual 
PAGA claims once an individual claim has been committed 
to a separate proceeding. Under PAGA's standing require­
ment, a plaintiff can maintain non-individual PAGA claims in 
an action only by virtue of also maintaining an individual 
claim in that action. See Cal. Lab. Code Ann. §§ 2699(a), (c). 
When an employee's own dispute is pared away from a PAGA 
action, the employee is no different from a member of the 
general public, and PAGA does not allow such persons to 
maintain suit. See Kim, 9 Cal. 5th, at 90, 459 P. 3d, at 1133 
(“PAGA's standing requirement was meant to be a departure 
from the `general public' . . . standing originally allowed” 
under other California statutes). As a result, Moriana lacks 
statutory standing to continue to maintain her non-individual 
claims in court, and the correct course is to dismiss her re­
maining claims. 
For these reasons, the judgment of the California Court 
of Appeal is reversed, and the case is remanded for further 
proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. 
It is so ordered. 
Justice Sotomayor, concurring. 
I join the Court's opinion in full. The Court faithfully ap­
plies precedent to hold that California's anti-waiver rule for 
claims under the State's Labor Code Private Attorneys Gen­
eral Act of 2004 (PAGA) is pre-empted only “insofar as it 
precludes division of PAGA actions into individual and non-
individual claims through an agreement to arbitrate.” Ante, 
at 662. In its analysis of the parties' contentions, the Court 
also details several important limitations on the pre-emptive 
effect of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). See ante, at 
653–659. As a whole, the Court's opinion makes clear that 
California is not powerless to address its sovereign concern 
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664 
VIKING RIVER CRUISES, INC. v. MORIANA 
Opinion of Barrett, J. 
that it cannot adequately enforce its Labor Code without as­
sistance from private attorneys general. 
The Court concludes that the FAA poses no bar to the 
adjudication of respondent Angie Moriana's “non-individual” 
PAGA claims, but that PAGA itself “provides no mechanism 
to enable a court to adjudicate non-individual PAGA claims 
once an individual claim has been committed to a separate 
proceeding.” Ante, at 663. Thus, the Court reasons, based 
on available guidance from California courts, that Moriana 
lacks “statutory standing” under PAGA to litigate her “non­
individual” claims separately in state court. Ibid. 
Of 
course, if this Court's understanding of state law is wrong, 
California courts, in an appropriate case, will have the last 
word. Alternatively, if this Court's understanding is right, 
the California Legislature is free to modify the scope of stat­
utory standing under PAGA within state and federal consti­
tutional limits. With this understanding, I join the Court's 
opinion. 
Justice Barrett, with whom Justice Kavanaugh joins, 
and with whom The Chief Justice joins except as to the 
footnote, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. 
I join Part III of the Court's opinion. 
I agree that 
reversal is required under our precedent because PAGA's 
procedure is akin to other aggregation devices that cannot 
be imposed on a party to an arbitration agreement. See, 
e. g., Stolt-Nielsen S. A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l Corp., 559 U. S. 
662 (2010); AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333 
(2011); Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U. S. ––– (2018); 
Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 587 U. S. ––– (2019). I would 
say nothing more than that. The discussion in Parts II and 
IV of the Court's opinion is unnecessary to the result, and 
much of it addresses disputed state-law questions as well as 
arguments not pressed or passed upon in this case.* 
*The same is true of Part I. 
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Cite as: 596 U. S. 639 (2022) 
665 
Thomas, J., dissenting 
Justice Thomas, dissenting. 
I continue to adhere to the view that the Federal Arbitra­
tion Act (FAA), 9 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., does not apply to pro­
ceedings in state courts. See Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. 
v. Dobson, 513 U. S. 265, 285–297 (1995) (Thomas, J., dissent­
ing); see also Kindred Nursing Centers L. P. v. Clark, 581 
U. S. 246, 257 (2017) (Thomas, J., dissenting) (collecting 
cases). Accordingly, the FAA does not require California's 
courts to enforce an arbitration agreement that forbids an 
employee to invoke the State's Private Attorneys General 
Act. On that basis, I would affrm the judgment of the Cali­
fornia Court of Appeal. 
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Reporter’s Note 
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 
punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 
p. 661, line 14: “operative” is inserted before “facts”