Whether a court may interpret a nonsignatory's contractual rights despite a delegation of questions of arbitrability to the arbitrator

QUESTION PRESENTED Arbitration agreements frequently allow the arbitrator to “decide not only the merits of a particular dispute but also ‘gateway’ questions of ‘arbitrability.” Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 139 S. Ct. 524, 529 (2019) (citation omitted). When an “agreement delegates the arbitrability issue to an arbitrator, a court may not decide [it].” Jd. at 530. Arbitrability issues include “whether the arbitration contract b[inds] parties who did not sign the agreement.” Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U.S. 79, 84 (2002). Yet when faced with agreements that delegate arbitrability issues to the arbitrator, the circuits have split 5-to-3 on if a court may nonetheless decide whether the agreement covers a nonsignatory. The Fourth Circuit recently joined the short side by refusing to enforce Respondent Lastephen Rogers’s clear agreement to arbitrate such “threshold issues.” App.15. Rogers had sued Petitioner Tug Hill for classifying him as an independent contractor, and Tug Hill sought arbitration as a third-party beneficiary of the contract between Rogers and the “company that had helped Rogers find the position with Tug Hill.” App.3. But rather than let the arbitrator exercise its “exclusive” power to interpret the agreement, the court simply construed it to find that Tug Hill was not “a third-party beneficiary.” App.5, 17-20. The question presented is: When an arbitration agreement delegates gateway questions of arbitrability to the arbitrator, may a court still interpret the agreement for itself to decide whether the agreement covers nonsignatories?