People throw the word "constitution" around, but it seems entirely reasonable for the US constitution to allow you to sign away access to your state's courts. F

People throw the word "constitution" around, but it seems entirely reasonable for the US constitution to allow you to sign away access to your state's courts. For federal, I'd support it, but it's not clear to me that you currently can: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii My argument against it would be: * "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." * "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under [...] the laws of the United States," If you sue somebody for selling your information, that's a "case [...] in equity", and the basis for your lawsuit should have some basis in federal law. So only the US court has judicial power over it. I'm not sure if Congress has the power to designate arbitration companies as courts, since this law instead uses the commerce clause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act A counter-argument could be that for breaches of contract specifically, you could write arbitration into the contract and the US court should clearly side with the arbiter in that case. The arbiter wouldn't have the power to send police or anything, but it would have the power to make a decision that the contract defers to and which the court would use. If it's not a breach of contract but is instead e.g. your landlord keeping your security deposit according to an illegal contract, I don't think a court would defer to an arbitrator's decision to uphold it. Of these three cases(arbitration over state law, arbitration over breach of contract(but enforced by US court), arbitration over illegal contract), only the 3rd seems that it could be a violation of US constitutional rights. The article is also misleading in this aspect: It's not possible for companies to do anything for your constitutional rights. If they could, they would instead be employer-provided benefits. Similarly, it probably doesn't make sense to ask Congress, your representative, or your state legislature for a law "protecting your constitutional rights", which I expect would be the next follow-up ideas. My question: Do the people complaining about a constitutional right to access the court necessarily also think the commerce clause is too broad? That seems unlikely to me. Another question: Would the same people complaining about arbitration complain if e.g. the company said, "Either sign away your right to arbitration, or lose $10k/year in salary that's going straight to our umbrella insurance"? If you banned arbitration, the extra risk would probably come out of your salary even if the company doesn't tell you and even if you find it hard to understand exactly how.