The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (“CPR”) presented on March 27, 2026, the latest instalment of its long-running hot-topics in arbitration video series: “Hot Topics: The Supreme Court’s March on Arbitration.” Our good friend and colleague Russ Bleemer, editor of Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation, moderated the presentation. The panelists were our other good friends and colleagues Professor Angela Downes and Richard D. Faulkner— plus the author, Philip J. Loree Jr.
This developments in arbitration video looked backward to the March 25, 2026, Supreme Court argument in Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock, No. 24-935 (U.S. argued Mar. 25, 2026), forward to the March 30 argument in Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties, No. 25-83 (U.S. argued Mar. 30, 2026), and sideways to certain consequential circuit decisions, including USAA Savings Bank v. Goff, No. 25-1730, slip op. (7th Cir. Mar. 19, 2026), and Bruce v. Adams & Reese, LLP, No. 25-5210, slip op. (6th Cir. Feb. 25, 2026). This was the eighteenth CPR arbitration video presentation this panel (or most of it), has given during the past four or five years.
The March 27, 2026, Video
The March 27 program is best understood not as a one-off webinar, but as the newest installment in a continuing conversation about where appellate arbitration law is heading. CPR’s December 2025 year-end program had already previewed Jules and Flowers Foods, the two U.S. Supreme Court arbitration-law cases the Court has thus far accepted this 2025 Term for review.
What the March 27, 2026, Video Shows About the Current State of Arbitration Law
This latest arbitration video shows that the four featured matters are different on their facts but closely related in what they reveal about the present state of arbitration law. None is a frontal assault on arbitration. Each instead concerns a doctrinal pressure point: where post-award litigation belongs, who falls within the FAA’s Section 1 transportation-worker exemption, when courts will conclude that arbitrators exceeded the bounds of the contract by not interpreting it, and how far Congress’s Ending Forced Arbitration Act (“EFAA”) carve-out extends once sexual-harassment or sexual-assault claims are pleaded together with other claims not covered by the EFAA.
In that respect, Jules remained the centerpiece. Jules asks whether a federal court that properly exercised federal question jurisdiction over an action, and then stayed that action pending arbitration under FAA Section 3, may later adjudicate post-award FAA motions without having a new and independent basis for subject-matter jurisdiction. The question is narrow only on the surface. In practical terms, it concerns whether a federal court that has federal question jurisdiction over the merits dispute, and pursuant to FAA Section 3 stays the litigation pending arbitration of the merits dispute, may, at the request of one of the parties, and without having a new and independent basis for subject matter jurisdiction (such as diversity), complete the job after the award returns, or whether the parties must instead start over in state court. The CPR panel’s discussion came only days before the March 30 argument, which made the presentation a timely and useful preview of one of the Court’s most important FAA jurisdiction-related cases since Badgerow v. Walters, 596 U.S. 1 (2022), and Smith v. Spizzirri, 601 U.S. 472 (2024).
Readers who view the March 27, 2026 presentation and the subsequent March 30, 2026 oral argument can see that the panelists’ comments were largely or entirely on the mark. CPR Speaks followed the argument with a very thoughtful same-day report, Supreme Court Hears Case on Federal Courts’ Powers to Confirm Arbitration Awards. A decision likely will issue before the close of the October 2025 Term in late June.
Flowers Foods concerns the scope of FAA Section 1’s transportation-worker exemption. But both Jules and Flowers Foods share an important feature: both concern where the FAA stops, and both therefore affect whether arbitration disputes will be resolved in court, in arbitration, or in some jurisdictional or procedural limbo between the two. The March 27 program accordingly framed Flowers not as an isolated exemption dispute, but as part of the Court’s broader and continuing effort to define the FAA’s boundaries with greater textual precision.
The panel also highlighted two significant circuit courts of appeals decisions that underscore how much important arbitration doctrine is shaped outside the U.S. Supreme Court. In Goff, the Seventh Circuit addressed a rare circumstance in which a court vacated an award on the ground that the arbitrator had, disregarded the parties’ contract and thus did not even arguably interpret it. That issue is significant not because courts often vacate awards on that basis, but because they rarely do. Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, 569 U.S. 564, 569, 572-73 (2013), made clear how narrow the path is for setting aside an award under FAA Section 10(a)(4) when the arbitrator is at least arguably construing the agreement. A decision like Goff therefore commands attention because it tests the line between genuine contract interpretation and an arbitrator’s substitution of her own notions of “[economic] justice” or “sound policy.” See id. at 569; Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 672, 675 (2010).
Bruce, in turn, is one of the most important circuit-court decisions construing the EFAA. The Sixth Circuit adopted what is sometimes called the entire-case rule: when a case includes an EFAA-covered sexual-harassment dispute, the statute renders the arbitration agreement unenforceable as to the whole case, not merely as to the EFAA-covered claims. See Bruce, slip op. at 17-19. Whether one agrees or disagrees with that reading, the decision is consequential because it gives the statute a broader practical effect than a claim-by-claim approach would have done. The March 27 CPR program usefully placed Bruce in the same conversation as Jules, Flowers Foods, and Goff because all four cases illuminate a common theme: appellate courts are increasingly defining arbitration law through technical yet consequential disputes over scope, forum, remedy, and statutory carve-outs, rather than through generalized debates about whether the federal policy in favor of arbitration should in a given case drive an arbitration-friendly outcome.
The presentation also illustrated the value of continuity among panelists. Professor Downes, Rick Faulkner, Russ Bleemer, and the author bring different vantage points to the discussion: academic, arbitral, appellate- and district-court practitioner, and editorial. Because the same group has returned repeatedly over several years, the programs have developed into something more useful than mere episodic commentary.
For readers of The Arbitration Law Forum, the key takeaway is straightforward. The March 27 program is worth watching not only for its discussion of the four featured cases, but also for the broader picture it paints. The doctrinal stakes of the Supreme Court’s arbitration docket are larger than they first appear. Lower federal courts continue to generate important arbitration law at a brisk pace. And many of the most consequential disputes now concern not whether arbitration will or should be enforced in the abstract, but how courts define the boundaries of arbitral power, arbitral forum, and arbitral exception. This eighteenth CPR presentation captures, in one discussion, several of the issues likely to shape arbitration-law practice in the months and years ahead.
Contacting the Author
If you have any questions about this article, arbitration, arbitration law, or arbitration-related litigation, then you may contact the author at pjl1@loreelawirm.com or +1 (516) 941-6094.
Philip J. Loree Jr. is principal of The Loree Law Firm, a New York attorney who focuses his practice on arbitration and arbitration-law matters. The Loree Law Firm’s website is https://loreelawfirm.com/.
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Photo Acknowledgment
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