A federal court that sends a case to arbitration keeps the case.

The case

Adrian Jules worked at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles from 2017 until his employment ended in March 2020. Andre Balazs Properties operated the hotel. Jules had signed an arbitration agreement before beginning the job.

Jules sued in federal district court in New York, alleging employment discrimination under federal and state law. The employer invoked the arbitration agreement and asked the court to stay the lawsuit under Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act. The district court granted that request in 2021.

The parties proceeded to arbitration, where the arbitrator ruled against Jules and in the employer's favor. The employer then returned to the same federal district court and moved under FAA Section 9 to confirm the award.

That sequence produced the jurisdictional question before the Supreme Court. A federal court plainly had jurisdiction over Jules's original discrimination claims. But once those claims had gone to arbitration, did the court retain authority to decide a motion concerning the resulting award when the motion had no independent jurisdictional basis on its face?

The problem Badgerow created

The Federal Arbitration Act supplies procedures for enforcing arbitration agreements and awards. Section 3 governs stays pending arbitration, Section 9 addresses confirmation of awards, and Section 10 provides grounds for vacatur. The statute does not, by itself, give federal courts subject-matter jurisdiction over every dispute involving arbitration.

In Badgerow v. Walters, decided in 2022, the Supreme Court rejected the use of a "look-through" approach to establish jurisdiction over a freestanding petition involving an arbitration award. A court could not inspect the underlying arbitration dispute, find a federal issue there, and use that issue to manufacture jurisdiction over a petition that otherwise did not belong in federal court.

Badgerow therefore imposed a meaningful limit. When a party files a standalone petition to confirm or vacate an award, some jurisdictional basis other than the FAA must connect that proceeding to federal court.

But Badgerow left uncertainty about a different procedural posture. What happens when federal claims are properly before a court, the court stays those claims for arbitration, and a party later returns to that same court concerning the award? Parties could argue that the confirmation or vacatur motion had to establish federal jurisdiction anew. That raised the prospect that a court might stay its own case for arbitration but lack power to handle the proceeding when it returned.

Jules required the Court to decide whether that result followed from Badgerow.

What the Court held

The Supreme Court unanimously held that it did not. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion, issued May 14, 2026, following argument on March 30.

A federal court with original jurisdiction over claims it later stayed pending arbitration "has the same jurisdiction to resolve motions to confirm or vacate a resulting arbitral award."

The jurisdiction comes from the original federal lawsuit, not from looking through the later motion to identify a federal issue in the arbitration. When the court stays the action under Section 3, the case remains pending on its docket. A later motion under Section 9 or Section 10 is part of that same case rather than a new, freestanding proceeding that must find its own route into federal court.

That distinction also explains why Jules does not overrule Badgerow.Badgerow governs petitions filed without an antecedent federal case supplying jurisdiction. Jules governs motions filed in a case that was already properly before a federal court and was stayed, rather than dismissed, while arbitration proceeded.

The ruling also forecloses a particular post-award maneuver. A party that receives an adverse arbitration award cannot avoid the original federal forum merely by arguing that the confirmation or vacatur motion, considered in isolation, lacks subject-matter jurisdiction. If the original claims supported federal jurisdiction and remained pending under a Section 3 stay, the court retains authority over the award-related motion.

Three consequences for practicing attorneys

What changes, in practice, for anyone drafting arbitration clauses or litigating motions to compel: