Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, I have been speaking about the need to ban forced arbitration since I joined Congress. It is wonderful to finally have this bill, the FAIR Act, up for a vote in Congress, and I really want to thank Congressman Johnson.

I think what is so troubling about forced arbitration is that, when we finally discover that we have become a victim of it, we feel helpless and taken advantage of. These forced arbitration clauses are buried in the fine print of everyday contracts, and before you know it, we are unknowingly giving up our legal rights.

But I come before you, Mr. Chairman, as a small business owner to say this is completely unnecessary. As a small business owner of 46 years, we are selling 4,000 and 5,000 cars a year, and we have never had to resort to mandatory binding arbitration. In fact, what we say is that, if you have a conflict, we would love to go to arbitration with you, and we will respect whatever the arbiter says; but, if you don't like it, you can still sue us, giving the maximum choice to the consumer. As a result, you rarely have a conflict that gets out of hand.

One only needs to think of the Wells Fargo case where Wells Fargo was sued by several of its customers for using their personal information to open all these fake accounts; but, when they filed suit against Wells Fargo, they found out they had this mandatory forced arbitration clause buried in the customer agreement.

Mr. Chairman, I encourage us to support this good bill.

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