Opinion: Are consumer rights a thing of the past?

Almost a decade ago, Vincent and Liza Concepcion entered into a sales contract with AT&T Mobility that contained an arbitration clause forbidding a customer to join with others in a class-action lawsuit against the company. The Concepcions, who were aggrieved because they were charged $30.22 in sales tax on a supposedly free phone, brought a class-action suit against AT&T anyway two years later. Class actions allow many people who suffer the same harm to join as a ‘class’ to seek compensation.

Underlying this legal debate about the interplay of state and federal law is a real-world concern: that consumers not be exploited by vastly more powerful merchants. Class actions allow injured consumers in California and other states who might not bring an action on their own to combine their claims and receive greater damages. (Opponents of class actions say the principal beneficiaries of such lawsuits are lawyers.)

This is nothing other than a conservative majority favoring the interests of businesses over consumers, employees and others suffering injuries. -- Erwin Chemerinsky, Los Angeles Times Suffice it to say that the Court’s decision completely defies the very federalism principles which are so often articulated by the very conservative members who agreed [...] to strike down a state’s effort to level the consumer playing field for millions of its residents. --Andrew Cohen, the Atlantic Unless Congress fixes the problem, the Supreme Court’s decision will bar many Americans from enforcing their rights in court and, in many cases like this one, bar them from enforcing rights at all. --New York Times editorial