Two consumers, Bianca Slaviero and Aisley Davis, sued Babylist — an online platform that helps expecting parents build and manage gift registries — alleging that the company helped third parties collect responses users provided during the account-creation questionnaire. Their complaint asserted one claim under the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2510, and two claims under California law.
Chief Judge Richard Seeborg granted Babylist's motion to compel arbitration and dismissed the case with prejudice. The central question was whether the plaintiffs had assented to Babylist's arbitration clause by clicking "Sign Up" on a page that displayed, in slightly smaller grey font below the button, a line stating that clicking Sign Up constituted agreement to the Babylist Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, with those terms hyperlinked in black underlined text.
Applying the Ninth Circuit's sign-in wrap framework from Chabolla v. ClassPass Inc., 129 F.4th 1147 (9th Cir. 2025), Keebaugh v. Warner Bros. Ent. Inc., 100 F.4th 1005 (9th Cir. 2024), and Oberstein v. Live Nation Ent., Inc., 60 F.4th 505 (9th Cir. 2023), the court held the notice sufficiently conspicuous. The sign-up page was relatively uncluttered, the contracting language appeared close to the action button with only a single intervening line of text, and the hyperlinks — though black rather than the green or blue used in Patrick v. Running Warehouse, 93 F.4th 468 (9th Cir. 2024), and Oberstein — were underlined and visually consistent with other hyperlinks on the page.
The unconscionability challenge failed at the threshold. Because both versions of the Terms of Use allowed users to opt out of arbitration by sending written notice to Babylist within 30 days of first registering for the service or within 30 days of the date the Terms were last updated, the court held the agreement was not a contract of adhesion under Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Ahmed, 283 F.3d 1198 (9th Cir. 2002). Without procedural unconscionability, the court declined to reach the plaintiffs' substantive unconscionability arguments concerning the agreement's pre-arbitration demand procedure and bellwether mass-arbitration provision.
On the question of who decides arbitrability, the court held that the issue was delegated to the arbitrator for both plaintiffs, though by different routes. Slaviero's 2025 Terms expressly committed all disputes about the scope, applicability, enforceability, revocability, or validity of the arbitration agreement to the arbitrator. Davis's 2023 Terms lacked that express language but incorporated JAMS Rule 11(b), which the Ninth Circuit held in Patrick constitutes clear and unmistakable evidence of delegation. The plaintiffs' unsophisticated-party argument failed because they submitted no competent evidence — only a bare assertion in their opposition brief — to support an inference that they could not grasp the delegation mechanism.