Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning contract law and arbitration.

Social activists criticized the banks and companies that engaged in those practices, calling them predatory lenders who targeted the poor with promises of no credit check and easy money that only came at extremely high interest rates, profiting when the loans were extended long beyond the original short term.

[5] In Southland Corp. v. Keating,[6] the Court held the FAA, and thus the separability doctrine, applicable to contracts executed under state law as well.

[5] The class would eventually be certified to include all the store's customers prior to September 30, 2001, reflecting a change in Florida law which allowed the fees.

[8] But then that decision was appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which reversed on the grounds that the contract was illegal ab initio and thus the arbitration clause was unenforceable.

[10] Christopher Landau of the Washington firm Kirkland & Ellis, a former clerk to justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas,[11] argued for Buckeye Check; Paul Bland of TLPJ represented Cardegna.

[12] Landau's brief reiterated much of the argument Florida's Justice Cantero had made in his dissent: that it did not matter whether the claim was that the contract had been fraudulently induced as in Prima Paint or that it was illegal on its face, as it was here.

[14] He also reminded the justices of the heavy presumption against pre-empting state law,[15] particularly in the area of contract formation, and that Prima Paint did not apply to the sections of the FAA under issue.

[16] In a reply brief Landau insisted again that the court's previous jurisprudence made it quite clear that the arbitration clause could only be negated if separately challenged.

While differing on some procedural points with Bland's brief, Theis lawyer Paul Johnson likewise urged the court to rule in Cardegna's favor lest the Arbitration Act become "a Trojan Horse to assault the citadel of police powers vested in the states".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg likewise was not convinced that Prima Paint, which had arisen from a suit filed in federal court, applied to states as well.

The Florida Supreme Court's distinction between void and voidable contracts was, as Cantero had said, irrelevant under Prima Paint and Southland.

He wrote a single paragraph citing his three earlier dissents in similar cases and restated his belief that the FAA does not pre-empt state law.

Again, Thomas wrote a short dissent reiterating his position and this time including Buckeye Check among his prior opinions to this effect.

[22] Proponents of arbitration and other means of alternative dispute resolution have seen in the decision a reassuring reaffirmation of the separability principle that cleared up whether it covered a challenge to the legality of the underlying contract.

[27] "Scalia’s opinion in Buckeye is an astonishing attempt to ... [institute] ... an explicit federal policy imposing arbitration and rejecting judicial resolution of many legal issues.