One of the reasons the class action lawsuit is such an effective tool at stemming corporate overreach is that it forces guilty parties to bear the consequences of their bad business decisions en masse. A gentle fleecing of one customer for $40 a year may not seem like a big deal until tens of thousands of fleeced customers are able to aggregate their claims and place an overarching cost to the bad practice.

But thanks to the Roberts Court, businesses have much less to fear from the class action lawsuit. That’s because, according to the holding in AT&T v. Conception, companies should be free to ban class actions in the fine print of their contracts.

The 5-4 ruling, authored by Justice Scalia, holds that corporations may use arbitration clauses to cut off consumers and employees’ right to band together through class actions to hold corporations accountable.

The decision is the most recent in a series of systematic efforts to roll back consumer protections and class action rights. In Concepcion, a cell phone customer claimed that AT&T’s contract promising a free phone did not mention a $30.22 sales tax charge. The customer sued, but AT&T argued the suit customer’s claim was barred by the […]