The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) explicitly limits itself to interstate commerce. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/9/1 https://www.law.cornell.edu/u

The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) explicitly limits itself to interstate commerce. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/9/1 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/9/1 It was passed in 1925, long before the seminal cases of National Labor Relations Board v Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (1937) and Wickard v. Filburn (1942) expanded Federal powers under the Commerce Clause. But note that the expanded powers were a consequence of the effect of the Necessary & Proper Clause; they didn't expand the definition of "interstate commerce", per se. It took an extremely activist Supreme Court, more than half a century later, that deliberately misread the text, intent, and purpose of the FAA, not to mention upend significant case precedent, to apply the FAA to all commercial transactions. They did it over more than a decade with a clearly incremental strategy. Most recently, they applied it to all employment agreements except for the railroad and maritime exclusions in the FAA, which is so perverted--because those exclusions are patent evidence that the FAA was intended to be limited to interstate commerce--that it boggles the mind such judges could even consider themselves conservative (small 'c'). Frankly it almost seems like they're doing it out of spite; that is, taking 1940s era liberal expansion of Commerce Clause powers to pursue a politically Conservative (big 'C') agenda.