Ninth Circuit Affirms Partial Denial of Motion to Compel Arbitration

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the partial denial of a motion to compel arbitration after concluding that the arbitration agreement did not clearly and unmistakably evidence an intent to delegate the question of arbitrability to the arbitrator and that the agreement exempted the claim at issue from arbitration.

Kelly Services Global LLC sought to compel arbitration of Raul Ruiz’s claims under California’s Unfair Competition Law. The district court denied the motion in part.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed. It noted that there must be “clear and unmistakable” evidence of an intent to delegate the question of arbitrability to an arbitrator in order to delegate that question. It explained that Ninth Circuit precedent holds that an “agreement can satisfy the clear-and-unmistakable requirement ... by incorporating the AAA rules into the agreement,” “[b]ut the initial determination of whether and how an agreement incorporates those AAA rules ... remains a question of state law.” The agreement at issue failed to satisfy that standard. It said “nothing about threshold questions related to the Agreement itself” and it was therefore “unclear whether the AAA rules would apply to third-order issues such as arbitrability.” Put differently, “[u]nder state contract law, the text and structure of the Agreement [could] be reasonably read to incorporate the AAA rules only as to a previously defined set of substantive claims, and to any matter that may arise out of the Agreement.” “Thus, under federal arbitration law, the Agreement’s incorporation of the AAA rules does not clearly and unmistakably delegate threshold questions of whether a particular claim is arbitrable in the first place.” The agreement also “exempt[ed] Ruiz’s statutory [unfair competition claim] from arbitration.”

Ruiz v. Kelly Services Global, LLC, No. 24-6529 (9th Cir. Jan. 8, 2026).