Yahoo! News - Finance: Losing the Right to Sue
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More and more businesses are sticking mandatory arbitration clauses into their contracts, forcing consumers to give up their right to sue if they want to conduct business, and consumer groups have made the elimination of these clauses a top priority.

The practice started with brokerage and credit card contracts but has become increasingly popular with mortgage lenders, car dealers, employers and even hospitals and doctors.


"These clauses are the single biggest threat to consumer rights in recent years, a de facto rewrite of the Constitution that undermines a broad range of consumer protections painstakingly built into law. No other consumer issue hits so many Americans where they live every day," said the National Consumer Law Center.

[more]
------

Well, maybe not the biggest threat, but one of the bigger ones. How does this differ from the CC&Rs that strip away your right to fly the flag or put up a Nader for President sign? I also saw today that Fannie Mae is instructing mortgage lenders not to put mandatory arbitration clauses in mortgages, a practice that is common for high risk loans. And Smart Money had an article on mandatory ADR last month.