Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in opposition to the bill and will speak to that.

Arbitration--let's go back to some basics here--provides consumers a simpler, cheaper, faster path to justice than does the judicial system. That is what the evidence showed the last time the Judiciary Committee performed oversight of the arbitration system during the 111th Congress, and that is what the evidence showed earlier this term when we renewed oversight in the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law.

In fact, the evidence in favor of preserving access to arbitration has only increased over time. Companies are continuing to improve the fairness of arbitration agreements and have long been following improved arbitration protocols to help assure due process is given to claimants against them.

The market resolved problems in consumer credit arbitrations considered during the 110th and 111th Congresses. A string of new Supreme Court decisions has demonstrated the Court's confidence in the arbitration system.

Even the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 2015 study of arbitration highlighted problems consumers would face if they had no access to arbitration but, instead, had to rely on flawed judicial class actions. The study shows the rise of predispute, mandatory binding arbitration agreements in consumer settings did not come out of nowhere. It stems directly from the repeated abuses of class actions that have plagued the judicial system in recent decades.

That is not to say that the arbitration system is perfect, but the arbitration system is generally good and should be preserved.

Unfortunately, that is not what the forced injustice repeal act would do. Rather than preserve and strengthen arbitration, it would wipe it out for enormous numbers of consumer and employment disputes, as well as many civil rights and antitrust disputes.

What that would do is not end injustice, but it would actually promote it. Because what happens when everyday consumers and employees are denied rights to arbitrate, rights their contracts guarantee them? In far too many cases, it means Americans will be shut out of the justice system entirely.

If their claims are small enough for small claims court, there may be an option. In 46 States and the District of Columbia, however, small claims courts only take claims worth $10,000 or less; 30 of those jurisdictions limit it to $5,000 or less.

Millions of claimants with cases worth amounts not much more than those ceilings will never be able to pay the courtroom lawyers enough to take their cases to ordinary trial courts.

Maybe if the claimants could qualify as plaintiffs in a class action, they could join those actions. Millions more will not. And even those who do can expect to get nothing in return but a postcard telling them they have won a few dollars and cents on a coupon.

Meanwhile, class action plaintiffs' trial lawyers will reap multimillion-dollar shares in fees from the recoveries they dole out to plaintiff class members at mere pennies on the dollar.

If you ask me, it would be better to call this bill the forced class action injustice guarantee act today.

Rather than wipe out arbitration, we should consider ways to make it better; and, while we do that, we should do everything we can to reform the abuse of the class action system.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Graham suggested that we ought to do just that at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on arbitration earlier this year, and he was exactly right. The worst result Congress could deliver to the American people would be to wipe out access to arbitration while leaving them no alternative but an unreformed judicial system.

Before I yield back, Madam Chair, this is something that is disturbing to me, because this is a bill that my gentleman friend just stated there is a list of horribles here, there is a list of horribles of abuse, sexual abuse, military.

All of these could have been addressed if we had sat down, as a Congress should do, as I told the chairman during the markup: Mr. Chairman, if we would have just sat down and talked about the issues facing us, we wouldn't be facing a veto threat from anywhere, we wouldn't be facing a Senate that is not going to take this up, and we could have found a bill that would not have had to have a rule. It could have been on suspension. Because we could have found the ways to fix the arbitration system, make sure that there is access, and protect those who need protecting without putting a partisan bill on the floor that simply will take people out of the system instead of including them, but be very profitable for those who do class action lawsuits.

Let's be honest about what is happening here. We are taking people out of the system, not putting them in. We are not really protecting them; we are actually hurting them. And this is the issue that could have been fixed with a true working Congress, in a true working committee. We just don't have that right now, and that is sad. That makes us all the worse in doing this.

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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Chair, yes, it is me, and I do speak truth here, and I will acknowledge there is one Republican cosponsor of this bill. It is bipartisan in that regard. However, it could have had 100 or more Republican cosponsors if we would have actually done legislation.

Instead, my gentle friend from Georgia just gets up and repeats trite statements about what Republicans want to do and what Republicans don't want to do. That is the problem we have right here. That is the problem, why we don't have legislation that actually works and will actually get signed and put into law.

Remember, a bill that only comes through one part and cannot get through to get a President's signature is simply a political statement. That is what we are doing today.

Madam Chair, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Armstrong) so he may manage the remainder of the time.

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