The Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 opinion Monday morning in Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis, a case that analyzed whether employment agreements requiring individual arbitration are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act.

The two key terms here are “individual” and “arbitration.” Arbitration is a form of alternative dispute resolution that requires the parties to resolve their dispute through a binding decision outside a traditional judicial forum—someone other than a judge in a courtroom. Individual means in this context that more than one person who has the same claim against the same employer cannot band together to minimize the costs of litigation, which usually has an evidentiary bias impact on the employer.

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