Kudos to the Public Justice Foundation’s “Access to Justice Campaign,” which has just won a major victory against AT&T in the Washington State Supreme Court – defeating federal preemption, mandatory arbitration, a class action ban, and a secrecy provision for consumers being denied their day in court. Founding Partner Antonio M. Romanucci is a Board member of Public Justice.

In McKee v. AT&T, the state's high court rejected AT&T's effort to nullify state consumer protection laws through a contract that banned class-action litigation and required individual mandatory arbitration for the company’s illegal billing charges.

Thousands of AT&T customers in Washington State were billed for "city utility surcharges," even when they did not live in municipalities subject to the surcharge.

The vast majority of the customers might never have known that they had been wrongfully charged the tax in the first place. Although the claims add up to millions of dollars in the aggregate, AT&T customers would not have been able individually to find lawyers willing to handle a claim involving overcharges of only $2 per month. As the Washington Supreme Court recognized, those claims could only be meaningfully pursued as a class action.