--- title: Al Franken: Internet Providers Restrict Your Legal Rights description: 'If we raise awareness about this quiet threat to our rights we can strike a blow for justice' — Franken and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn canonical: https://time.com/4541176/al-franken-arbitration-clauses/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-23T11:00:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:50:38.676Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Al Franken and Mignon Clyburn: How Your Internet Provider Restricts Your Rights og:description: No business should be too big to hold accountable in a court of law og:url: https://time.com/4541176/al-franken-arbitration-clauses/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbb638de43ff35dbe/6988ab22cf40a87864c45447/al-franken.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is seen at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Al Franken and Mignon Clyburn: How Your Internet Provider Restricts Your Rights twitter:description: No business should be too big to hold accountable in a court of law twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbb638de43ff35dbe/6988ab22cf40a87864c45447/al-franken.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Al Franken and Mignon Clyburn: How Your Internet Provider Restricts Your Rights > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Senator Al Franken](https://time.com/author/senator-al-franken/) and [Mignon Clyburn](https://time.com/author/mignon-clyburn/) Oct 23, 2016 11:00 AM UTC  Senator Al Franken is seen at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 27, 2016. Senator Al Franken is seen at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 27, 2016. Gary Cameron—Reuters by [Senator Al Franken](https://time.com/author/senator-al-franken/) and [Mignon Clyburn](https://time.com/author/mignon-clyburn/) Oct 23, 2016 11:00 AM UTC When you are wronged in America, you are supposed to be able to find justice in our legal system. It doesn’t matter who you are—and, importantly, it doesn’t matter who wronged you. No entity is supposed to be too big or too powerful to hold accountable in a court of law. But communications providers who offer access to the internet in our homes and on our phones have found a way to evade accountability by effectively locking the courtroom doors on their customers. They do it through the use of what are known as [mandatory arbitration clauses](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/business/dealbook/arbitration-nursing-homes-elder-abuse-harassment-claims.html), buried deep in the fine print of the contracts you have to sign in order to get internet service. These clauses force you to sign away your right to go to court in the event of a dispute, in favor of [a private arbitration process that is inherently biased](http://time.com/4540095/gretchen-carlsons-next-fight/) towards corporations and offers no meaningful appeals process. [**READ: The Teeny Tiny Fine Print That Can Allow Sexual Harassment Claims to Go Unheard**](http://time.com/4540111/arbitration-clauses-sexual-harassment/) Last year, [The New York _Times_ ](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html?%5Fr=0)reported on the proliferation of these clauses in employment contracts, nursing home contracts, credit card contracts, and other agreements between individuals and corporations, describing the trend as “a far-reaching power play” and highlighting examples of people who were deeply wronged by these corporations, only to discover that they had unwittingly forfeited their constitutional right to hold them accountable in court. Ever since a series of controversial Supreme Court decisions ruling that companies can use these clauses to force disputes out of the legal system and into the private arbitration process, they’ve become far more common. And in telecom contracts, they’re nearly ubiquitous. A study by the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found](http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201503%5Fcfpb%5Farbitration-study-report-to-congress-2015.pdf) that 99.9% of wireless subscribers were subject to mandatory arbitration clauses. Moreover, 99.7% of those contracts specifically prohibited class-action suits. Why does that matter? Imagine you pay to upgrade to faster internet service, but find that your service keeps cutting out. Or imagine that a mysterious 99-cent fee starts appearing on your broadband bill, separate from the monthly rate you agreed to pay. Or imagine that you go to cancel your service, only to get hit with a $200 early termination fee you don’t remember agreeing to pay. If you believe that you’ve been wronged, you could take your service provider to court. But you’d have to find a lawyer willing to take on a multi-national telecom provider over a few hundred bucks. And even if you won the case, you’d likely pay more in legal fees than you’d recover in the verdict. The only feasible way for you as a customer to hold that corporation accountable would be to band together with other customers who had been similarly wronged, building a case substantial enough to be worth the cost—and to dissuade that big corporation from continuing to rip its customers off. That is exactly why these mandatory arbitration clauses specifically prohibit class-action lawsuits: because they may be the only thing these telecom giants really fear. With class action off the table, they know it’ll never be worth your while to take them to court, even when they are clearly in the wrong. Of course, a broadband provider is not necessarily out to defraud its customers. But with mandatory arbitration clauses in place, what’s to stop them from doing so? If you’re prohibited from using our legal system to get justice when you’re wronged, what’s to protect you from being wronged in the first place? That’s why the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services have all tried to crack down on mandatory arbitration clauses in various contracts—because you shouldn’t have to give up your day in court to get a job, or take out a loan, or put a parent in a nursing home. And in an age where reliable and affordable internet access is an absolute necessity, we believe that you shouldn’t have to give up your day in court to go online, either. That’s why we’re teaming up to try to eliminate mandatory arbitration clauses in telecom contracts. But whether it’s in the Senate (where Al has authored legislation that would ban these clauses) or at the Federal Communications Commission (where Mignon is leading the charge for a regulatory crackdown this month), your voice matters in this fight. After all, these are your rights at stake. If the issue of mandatory arbitration remains just another little-known way for corporations to take advantage of the little guy, it’ll be impossible to stop them. But if we raise awareness about this quiet threat to our rights and raise our voices in support of eliminating this unfair practice once and for all, we can strike a blow for justice and protect every American who goes online—which is pretty much all of us. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4541176/al-franken-arbitration-clauses/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4541176/al-franken-arbitration-clauses/"},"headline":"Al Franken and Mignon Clyburn: How Your Internet Provider Restricts Your Rights","datePublished":"2016-10-23T11:00:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:50:38.676Z","description":"No business should be too big to hold accountable in a court of law","url":"https://time.com/4541176/al-franken-arbitration-clauses/","keywords":["Tech","politics"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbb638de43ff35dbe/6988ab22cf40a87864c45447/al-franken.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Senator Al Franken","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/senator-al-franken/"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Mignon Clyburn","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/mignon-clyburn/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbb638de43ff35dbe/6988ab22cf40a87864c45447/al-franken.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is seen at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania","caption":"Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is seen at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania","creditText":"Gary Cameron—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4541176/al-franken-arbitration-clauses/","name":"Al Franken and Mignon Clyburn: How Your Internet Provider Restricts Your Rights"}}]}] ```