US Supreme Court agrees to take up Coinbase case involving arbitration jurisdiction
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear a case involving Coinbase and whether a dispute involving a Dogecoin sweepstakes can be settled through arbitration. The move comes almost a year after Judge Sallie Kim, for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, denied Coinbase's motion to take the dispute to arbitration, according to an opinion from December 2022. Arbitration can be favored by companies because it can cost less and be resolved more quickly.
The case involves two different contracts, one that would lead to arbitration and the other that would be required to be figured out in a California court. David Suski, a Coinbase user among others, opted into Coinbase's Dogecoin Sweepstakes in June 2021 and agreed to a user agreement, which included an arbitration provision. Suski then later opted into a separate "officials rules" for the sweepstakes, which included a clause that California courts would have "exclusive jurisdiction over any controversies regarding the sweepstakes," according to Kim's opinion. Coinbase argued that the user agreement should have superseded the official rules, but the California judge ultimately disagreed.
