Comcast Cable Communications v. Ramsey

Under California’s consumer-protection statutes, a person who has been injured by an unfair or deceptive business practice may seek an injunction against those practices to protect the public. In McGill v. Citibank (2017), the California Supreme Court held that, under state law, a contract that purports to waive a consumer’s right seek public injunctive relief is invalid and unenforceable.

In this case, Comcast customer Charles Ramsey sought a public injunction in California state court to require Comcast to be more transparent about the prices of its cable and internet packages. Comcast petitioned the trial court to compel arbitration pursuant to a provision in Mr. Ramsey’s subscriber agreement. The trial court denied the petition under McGill because the subscriber agreement barred the arbitrator from granting public injunctive relief, thus leaving Mr. Ramsey without any forum in which to seek such relief if the petition were granted. The state appellate court affirmed, and Comcast petitioned for review in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts McGill’s nonwaiver rule.

Serving as co-counsel for Ramsey in the Supreme Court, Public Citizen drafted the brief in opposition to Comcast’s petition. The brief explains that courts have uniformly rejected Comcast’s FAA argument and that the Supreme Court has denied review of the issue on many prior occasions, and that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana (2022) reaffirmed the principle that the FAA does not require enforcement of contracts that unlawfully purport to waive a party’s substantive rights, thus reinforcing that review remains unwarranted.