Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna

Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 29, 2005 Decided February 21, 2006
Full case name	Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc., petitioner v. John Cardegna et al.
Citations	546 U.S. 440 (more) 126 S. Ct. 1204; 163 L. Ed. 2d 1038; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 1814
Case history
Prior	Petitioner's motion to compel arbitration denied in Florida trial court; reversed on appeal, 824 So. 2d 228 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2002); appeals court decision reversed, 894 So. 2d 860 (Fla. 2005); cert. granted, 545 U.S. 1127 (2005).
Subsequent	On remand, 930 So. 2d 610 (Fla. 2006).
Holding
Where contract contains arbitration clause, arbitrator alone can rule on legality of contract under state law in first instance unless clause itself is challenged, distinguishing between void and voidable. Florida Supreme Court reversed and remanded
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Majority	Scalia, joined by Roberts, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent	Thomas
Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 1–4

Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning contract law and arbitration. The case arose from a class action filed in Florida against a payday lender alleging the loan agreements the plaintiffs had signed were unenforceable because they essentially charged a higher interest rate than that permitted under Florida law.

The lending agreements called for all disputes between the borrower and lender to be settled in arbitration. The original plaintiffs argued that the entire contract, including the arbitration clause, was invalid because it violated the law. When it was appealed to the High Court, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a majority of seven that the Federal Arbitration Act, as previously interpreted by the Court, settled a question that had long been debated by legal scholars and lower-court judges. The opinion distinguished void and voidable contracts, requiring that in the latter an arbitrator rule on all issues including the legality of the contract unless the arbitration clause was itself challenged.^[1] The only dissenter was Clarence Thomas, who restated his belief that the Arbitration Act does not supersede state law.