By Thea Rogers (June 4, 2018, 11:50 AM EDT) -- On May 21, the U.S. Supreme Court's seminal Epic Systems v. Lewis decision held that lower courts must enforce individual arbitration clauses in employment contracts that prevent employees from bringing class actions (such clauses are often known as "class waivers"), thus extending the Federal Arbitration Act far beyond its original scope. The Epic Systems employee-plaintiffs argued that, although the FAA generally requires courts to enforce arbitration clauses in employment agreements, this obligation was removed because the FAA's saving clause "created an exception for cases like theirs." By its very terms, the plaintiffs argued, the savings clause "allows courts to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements 'upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.'" Here, the federal law that allegedly rendered the enforcement of class and collective action waivers illegal was the National Labor Relations Act. The court majority, however, declined to side with the plaintiffs and ultimately held that "arbitration agreements for individualized proceedings must be enforced, and neither the [FAA]'s saving clause nor the NLRA suggests otherwise" (emphasis added)....