Minnesota's Arbitration Act Has a Floor a Bank Cannot Draft Below. It Protects Your Lawyer and the Arbitrator's Disclosures — Not Your Remedies.

There was supposed to be a federal answer to this. On July 19, 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published a final rule titled “Arbitration Agreements,” 82 Fed. Reg. 33210, which by the Bureau’s own summary “prohibits covered providers of certain consumer financial products and services from using an agreement with a consumer that provides for arbitration of any future dispute between the parties to bar the consumer from filing or participating in a class action concerning the covered consumer financial product or service.”

Congress killed it before it took effect. The entire operative text of the joint resolution is one sentence:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to “Arbitration Agreements” (82 Fed. Reg. 33210 (July 19, 2017)), and such rule shall have no force or effect.

Pub. L. 115-74, 131 Stat. 1243 (approved Nov. 1, 2017). Nothing federal has replaced it.

So a Minnesotan holding a deposit account has two documents that matter: the account agreement the bank wrote, and Minn. Stat. ch. 572B, the Minnesota Revised Uniform Arbitration Act. This piece is about reading both — and about the one part of chapter 572B that the bank’s drafting cannot reach.

The thesis is not the comforting one. Chapter 572B does contain a nonwaivable floor — Minn. Stat. § 572B.04, two lists, one binding only before a dispute arises and one binding always. Most consumers and a fair number of lawyers do not know it is there. But it protects process, not outcome. Your right to bring a lawyer into the arbitration cannot be signed away in advance. The neutral arbitrator’s duty to disclose conflicts cannot be unreasonably restricted. What that arbitrator is permitted to award you appears on neither list.

What in the clause itself decides the case before anyone reaches the merits

Four features do most of the work, and none of them is the part of the contract anyone reads.

How broad is the “relating to” language? Minnesota law is not on the consumer’s side of this. In Michael-Curry Cos. v. Knutson Shareholders Liquidating Trust, 449 N.W.2d 139 (Minn. 1989), the Minnesota Supreme Court held a clause covering “[a]ny controversy or claim arising out of, or relating to, this Agreement, or the making, performance, or interpretation thereof” broad enough to send fraud in the inducement to the arbitrator: “[i]t is difficult to see how the parties in this case could have drafted a ‘broader’ agreement.” A footnote adds the drafting rule — parties who want to limit the arbitrators’ powers “should have specifically expressed this in the broadly-worded arbitration clause.” (Decided under the predecessor act, Minn. Stat. §§ 572.08–.09 (1988), not chapter 572B.) Deposit agreements are written to that standard: the clauses in Jabbari v. Wells Fargo & Co., No. 3:15-cv-02159 (N.D. Cal.) (Chhabria, J.), reached “any unresolved disagreement between or among [the customer] and the Bank . . . includ[ing] any dispute relating in any way to [the customer’s] Accounts and Services . . . .” What a bank did with that is a separate story.

Does the clause say who decides arbitrability? If it does, the court may be out of the argument entirely. Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. 63 (2019): “When the parties’ contract delegates the arbitrability question to an arbitrator, a court may not override the contract. In those circumstances, a court possesses no power to decide the arbitrability issue.” Delegation must be explicit — courts “should not assume that the parties agreed to arbitrate arbitrability unless there is clear and unmistakable evidence that they did so.” Id. (quoting First Options of Chi., Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 944 (1995)) (alterations omitted by the Court). How Minnesota handles that is in our map of what the state can and cannot resist.

Is there a class-action waiver? Assume yes, and assume it works. AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), held California’s Discover Bank rule — which treated class waivers in consumer arbitration agreements as unconscionable in defined circumstances — preempted by the FAA, and since Pub. L. 115-74 no federal rule bars them in consumer financial contracts. For a $38 fee on an account you did not open, the class device is often the only economically rational vehicle; that is the quiet arithmetic of the narrowing courthouse door.

Is there an opt-out, and has the window closed? Many deposit agreements include one. Read it in the version in effect when the account was opened, not the version on the bank’s website today, and note both the deadline and the required method.

The floor: what Minn. Stat. § 572B.04 will not let a pre-dispute clause do

Section 572B.04 is the provision almost nobody cites. Subsection (a) is permissive — parties may “waive or vary the requirements of sections 572B.01 to 572B.31 to the extent permitted by law.” Then come the two exceptions.

Subsection (b), the pre-dispute list, in full:

(b) Before a controversy arises that is subject to an agreement to arbitrate, the parties to the agreement may not:

(1) waive or vary the requirements of section 572B.05, subsection (a); 572B.06, subsection (a); 572B.08; 572B.17, subsection (a) or (b); 572B.26; or 572B.27;

(2) unreasonably restrict the right under section 572B.09 to notice of the initiation of an arbitration proceeding;

(3) unreasonably restrict the right under section 572B.12 to disclosure of any facts by a neutral arbitrator; or

(4) waive the right under section 572B.16 of a party to an agreement to arbitrate to be represented by a lawyer at any proceeding or hearing under sections 572B.01 to 572B.31, except that an employer and a labor organization may waive the right to representation by a lawyer in a labor arbitration.

Three things are worth pausing on.

The timing. Subsection (b) binds only before a controversy arises. A deposit agreement signed at account opening is by definition pre-dispute, so subsection (b) applies to it in full. After a dispute exists, the same terms can be negotiated away.

The right to counsel is an absolute waiver bar, not a reasonableness standard. Section 572B.16 is a single sentence: “A party to an arbitration proceeding may be represented by a lawyer.” Paragraph (b)(4) makes it unwaivable in advance, with one carve-out for labor arbitration. A consumer clause purporting to require a self-represented arbitration asks for something the statute says the parties could not agree to before the dispute.

But paragraphs (2) and (3) are reasonableness standards, not prohibitions. They forbid unreasonably restricting the § 572B.09 notice right and the § 572B.12 disclosure right. A clause can shape those rights; it cannot gut them. Where the line sits is a question a court would answer on the specific language.

The disclosure duty is the underused half

Section 572B.12(a) requires an individual asked to serve as arbitrator, “[b]efore accepting appointment,” and “after making a reasonable inquiry,” to disclose to all parties and any other arbitrators

any known facts that a reasonable person would consider likely to affect the impartiality of the arbitrator in the arbitration proceeding, including:

(1) a financial or personal interest in the outcome of the arbitration proceeding; and

(2) an existing or past relationship with any of the parties to the agreement to arbitrate or the arbitration proceeding, their counsel or representatives, witnesses, or the other arbitrators.

Subsection (b) makes the obligation continuing. And subsection (e) supplies the consequence:

An arbitrator appointed as a neutral who does not disclose a known, direct, and material interest in the outcome of the arbitration proceeding or a known, existing, and substantial relationship with a party is presumed to act with evident partiality under section 572B.23, subsection (a)(2).

Evident partiality by a neutral is a vacatur ground under § 572B.23, subsection (a)(2)(A) — and § 572B.23 is on the absolute list below. Where the bank is a repeat institutional customer of the arbitration provider and the consumer is there once, that machinery is the most practically useful thing in the chapter. It works only if someone asks for the disclosures and objects on the record when one is missing — following the provider’s challenge procedure, because § 572B.12(f) makes substantial compliance with it a condition precedent to a motion to vacate on that ground.

Subsection (c): the provisions no agreement may touch, ever

(c) The parties to an agreement to arbitrate may not waive or vary the requirements of this section or section 572B.03, subsection (a)(1) or (b); 572B.07; 572B.14; 572B.18; 572B.20, subsection (c) or (d); 572B.22; 572B.23; 572B.24; 572B.25, subsection (a) or (b); 572B.29; 572B.30; or 572B.31.

The list protects itself first — “this section” — so a clause cannot contract around § 572B.04.

The load-bearing entry for a consumer is § 572B.07. If the resisting party opposes a motion to compel, “the court shall proceed summarily to decide the issue.” Then: “Unless the court finds that there is no enforceable agreement to arbitrate, it shall order the parties to arbitrate. If the court finds that there is no enforceable agreement, it may not order the parties to arbitrate.” Subsection (c) closes the other door: the court “may not refuse to order arbitration because the claim subject to arbitration lacks merit or grounds for the claim have not been established.” A Minnesota court’s threshold role is narrow, but it is statutory and cannot be drafted away.

The back end is protected too — confirmation (§ 572B.22), vacatur (§ 572B.23), modification and correction (§ 572B.24), and entry of judgment (§ 572B.25(a)). The vacatur grounds and the 90-day clock that runs on them are in our earlier arbitration piece; § 572B.24(a) carries its own 90-day deadline for mathematical miscalculations and comparable defects. And § 572B.29(b) makes the no-fault provisions of Minn. Stat. §§ 65B.41 to 65B.71 prevail over any conflicting part of chapter 572B — nonwaivably, which is why no-fault arbitration runs on its own track.

What the floor does not protect — read this part twice

Compare § 572B.04(b) and (c) against the chapter’s table of contents and the gaps are conspicuous.

Section 572B.21 is the one to sit with. An arbitrator may award punitive damages where authorized by law in a civil action on the same claim, and “may award attorney fees and other reasonable expenses of arbitration if such an award is authorized by law in a civil action involving the same claim or by the agreement of the parties to the arbitration proceeding.” Neither subsection appears in § 572B.04(b) or (c). Read with Michael-Curry‘s footnote — parties who want to limit the arbitrators’ powers should say so in the clause — the structure is plain: Minnesota’s nonwaivable core is access, information, and forum. It is not remedy. That is the pattern across the statute books in what Minnesota will and will not let you contract away.

Two qualifications, because the gaps are not bottomless. Section 572B.15 is unprotected on its face, but § 572B.23(a)(3) — nonwaivable — permits vacatur where an arbitrator “otherwise conducted the hearing contrary to section 572B.15, so as to prejudice substantially the rights of a party to the arbitration proceeding.” And a remedy limitation that made the forum useless would still face the generally applicable contract defenses 9 U.S.C. § 2 preserves by its own terms. Those are arguments, not guarantees.

The part no one should soft-pedal: does the FAA preempt this floor?

We do not know, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

Section 572B.04 is a Minnesota rule. It applies, by its terms, only to agreements to arbitrate. That is precisely the feature the Federal Arbitration Act treats with suspicion. Section 2 of the FAA provides:

A written provision in any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter arising out of such contract or transaction, or the refusal to perform the whole or any part thereof, or an agreement in writing to submit to arbitration an existing controversy arising out of such a contract, transaction, or refusal, shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract or as otherwise provided in chapter 4.

9 U.S.C. § 2. A bank deposit agreement is almost certainly “a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce.” And in Kindred Nursing Centers L.P. v. Clark, 581 U.S. 246 (2017), the Court described what § 2 does with state rules:

That statutory provision establishes an equal-treatment principle: A court may invalidate an arbitration agreement based on “generally applicable contract defenses” like fraud or unconscionability, but not on legal rules that “apply only to arbitration or that derive their meaning from the fact that an agreement to arbitrate is at issue.”

There are real counterarguments — chapter 572B is a procedural arbitration statute rather than an anti-arbitration one, § 572B.04 limits what the parties may agree to rather than making agreements unenforceable, and the uniform act it comes from was drafted to work alongside the FAA. But those are arguments. We have not found a Minnesota appellate decision or an Eighth Circuit decision addressing whether the FAA preempts § 572B.04’s nonwaivable lists. Why Minnesota rules that name arbitration start on the back foot is set out in the preemption map; the longer story of how a 1925 merchants’ statute got here is here.

Do not treat § 572B.04 as a shield you can stand behind. Treat it as a provision worth raising, early, in writing, with the preemption answer prepared.

If a clause is in front of you

1. Get the whole agreement in the version that governed when the account was opened, including every amendment the bank claims to have mailed you.
2. Find the four features above: the breadth of “relating to,” any delegation of arbitrability, the class waiver, and the opt-out deadline.
3. Check the remedy and fee terms specifically. Section 572B.21 is not on the nonwaivable list; a clause limiting what an arbitrator may award is not obviously invalid under chapter 572B.
4. Do not arbitrate without counsel because a document told you to. Section 572B.16 and § 572B.04(b)(4) exist.
5. Demand the arbitrator’s § 572B.12 disclosures in writing and object on the record if they are thin — following the provider’s challenge procedure, because § 572B.12(f) makes substantial compliance a condition precedent.
6. Calendar the post-award deadlines the moment an award arrives. They are short, nonwaivable, and unforgiving.

Madgett Law, LLC reads arbitration clauses in Minnesota consumer and business contracts — whether one binds you, how far its language reaches, who decides that question, what chapter 572B will not let it take away, and what remains of an award once it issues. If a bank or a lender is asserting a clause against you, send us a message or call 612-470-6529.

Companion pieces: how a bank used real account agreements to force claims about fabricated accounts out of court, and whether a Minnesota clause reaches an account you never opened.

Sources: Minn. Stat. § 572B.04 (effect of agreement to arbitrate; nonwaivable provisions — subsection (a) for the general power to waive or vary, subsection (b) and its paragraphs (1)–(4) for the pre-dispute list, subsection (c) for the absolute list); § 572B.03 (when act applies); § 572B.05 (application to court); § 572B.07 (motion to compel or stay arbitration — subsections (a) and (c)); § 572B.08 (provisional remedies); § 572B.09 (initiation of arbitration — subsection (a) notice contents); § 572B.11 (appointment of arbitrator; service as a neutral); § 572B.12 (disclosure by arbitrator — subsections (a), (b), (e), and (f)); § 572B.15 (arbitration process); § 572B.16 (representation by lawyer — full text); § 572B.17 (witnesses; subpoenas; depositions; discovery — subsections (a) and (b)); § 572B.20 (change of award by arbitrator — subsections (b), (c), and (d)); § 572B.21 (remedies; fees and expenses of arbitration proceeding — subsections (a) and (b)); § 572B.22 (confirmation of award); § 572B.23 (vacating award — subsections (a)(2)(A) and (a)(3), and the 90-day deadline in subsection (b)); § 572B.24 (modification or correction of award — subsection (a) 90-day deadline); § 572B.25 (judgment on award; attorney fees and litigation expenses — subsections (a), (b), and (c)); § 572B.26 (jurisdiction); § 572B.27 (venue); § 572B.28 (appeals); § 572B.29 (uniformity of application and construction; No-Fault Automobile Insurance Act; conflict; prevailing law — subsection (b)) — all from the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, 2025 Minnesota Statutes, retrieved July 2026; § 572B.04 shows no amendment after 2014 (Hist.: 2010 c 264 art 1 s 4, 33; 2014 c 275 art 1 s 127). 9 U.S.C. § 2 (Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. Code, text in effect Aug. 1, 2026) for the scope of the Federal Arbitration Act and the saving clause. Pub. L. 115-74, 131 Stat. 1243 (H.J. Res. 111, approved Nov. 1, 2017) (govinfo) for congressional disapproval of the CFPB rule; 82 Fed. Reg. 33210 (July 19, 2017), “Arbitration Agreements” (Federal Register) for the rule’s class-action-waiver prohibition. Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. 63 (2019) (Cornell Legal Information Institute) for the effect of a contractual delegation of arbitrability and for the clear-and-unmistakable standard quoted there from First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 944 (1995). AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) (LII syllabus) for FAA preemption of California’s Discover Bank rule on consumer class waivers. Kindred Nursing Centers L.P. v. Clark, 581 U.S. 246, 251 (2017) (official U.S. Reports, via govinfo.gov bound-volume publication USREPORTS-581) for the equal-treatment principle. Michael-Curry Cos. v. Knutson Shareholders Liquidating Trust, 449 N.W.2d 139 (Minn. Dec. 15, 1989) (Caselaw Access Project) for the breadth of “arising out of, or relating to . . . the making” language and the drafting footnote on limiting arbitrators’ powers; decided under Minn. Stat. §§ 572.08–.09 (1988), the predecessor of chapter 572B. Jabbari v. Wells Fargo & Co., No. 3:15-cv-02159 (N.D. Cal.) (Chhabria, J.) — case name, docket number, assigned judge, and 2015 filing date confirmed on CourtListener’s RECAP docket; the quoted clause language is taken from this firm’s research file on the litigation and not from an independently retrieved copy of the order.

This article is general legal information about Minnesota and federal law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts any part of Minn. Stat. § 572B.04 is an open question on which we have found no controlling Minnesota or Eighth Circuit authority; nothing here predicts how any court would rule on any particular clause. Whether a specific arbitration provision is enforceable, and how far its language reaches, depends on the contract’s terms and the facts of the transaction. No outcome is promised or implied.