This case did not involve a waiver of jury trial, but rather an agreement to proceed individually rather than through class action. But waivers of jury trial are routinely approved by courts in other circumstances and rightly so, since they are efficient and voluntary. Your parade of imagined horribles, some of which items are unlawful under other statutes and some of which are not particularly horrible, could be extended at length: the very wicked employment contract also chills your speech by preventing you from standing on a table in the employee cafeteria shouting epithets at the boss, it may require you to forswear your constitutional right to travel, and so on and so forth.

We’ve disagreed on this issue numerous times in the past, so I’m sorry I haven’t convinced you yet. Maybe tomorrow’s post will do it.

– Prohibition of firearm ownership
– Requiring voting for certain candidates or political parties
– Permitting law enforcement to search their homes without a warrant
– Forbidding the exercise of religion
– etc…

Yet giving up the right to a trial by jury is somehow different? That one is a win?

I offer a brief answer to that question in my Cato post today on Epic Systems (summary link will post tomorrow), and a longer answer, generally defending the validity, voluntariness, and usefulness of most contracts of adhesion, in my book The Litigation Explosion.

https://www.cato.org/blog/apocalypse-not-arbitration-survives-epic-systems-v-lewis

Sorry, fixed now.