While several recent Supreme Court decisions have garnered significant headlines, the Court’s late June ruling in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, (Case No. 22-15), likely flew under the radar for the national media outlets. For practitioners who frequently deal with motions to compel arbitration, however, the justices’ 5-4 decision resolves a circuit split and follows the majority of courts by mandating an automatic stay when a party seeks an appeal on a right to arbitrate.

The underlying case involved a pair of California district courts that refused to compel arbitration involving the Coinbase User Agreement. Coinbase appealed both rulings, and in both cases, the district courts refused to stay the proceedings while the appeals were pending. After sifting through a civil procedure course final exam’s worth of scenarios, the parties appeared before the Supreme Court for oral argument on March 21. And as we have previously blogged on March 27, 2023, the justices’ questions were extensive and pointed, and they turned primarily on judicial precedent and the language of Section 16(a) of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).