Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

Most companies know the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requires employers to pay employees a minimum hourly wage plus overtime, unless an exemption applies. What may be surprising, however, is how broadly the FLSA and courts applying it define who is an “employer.”

In Harris et. al. v. Medical Transportation Management, Inc. et. al., the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a putative class cannot be certified as an “issue” class under Rule 23(c)(4) without also satisfying the requirements in Rule 23(a) and (b).  This ruling is important because it prohibits putative classes from using the “issue” class mechanism of Rule 23(c)(4) to skirt the important procedural requirements in Rule 23(a) and (b) that are meant to protect both the litigants and absent parties.  The court also encouraged the use of the partial summary judgment mechanism, rather than Rule 23(c)(4), to resolve discrete legal issues common to many class members. 

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act requires employers to give employees at least 60 days’ notice when a “mass layoff” is about to occur at a “single site of employment,” which is typically a single location or a group of contiguous work locations.  Courts are beginning to confront the question of what constitutes a “single site of employment” under the WARN Act for employees working remotely, and how remote work policies impact class certification considerations.  Given the prevalence of remote work during the pandemic and the likely continuation of such work arrangements, these decisions are of particular importance to employers considering mass layoffs or facing class actions based on the application of remote work policies or practices.

A federal district court in Florida recently declined to conditionally certify a nationwide collective action brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) because the plaintiff did not show sufficient evidence that she was similarly situated to other restaurant managers who wanted to join.

The combination of a quirky procedural posture and broad language used by the Supreme Court in 1941 have left Home Depot trapped in a North Carolina state court defending against a class action, despite the removal provisions of the Class Action Fairness Act.  On September 27, 2018, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether CAFA authorizes removal of class action counterclaims when its requirements are otherwise met.

As we wrote about last month, on May 21, 2018, the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1632 (2018), rejecting perhaps the largest remaining obstacles to the enforcement of class action waivers in arbitration agreements in the employment context.  The Court concluded that the class action waivers did not violate the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”).  Although the Court’s opinion also seemed dispositive of whether such agreements could be avoided under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), at least one claimant tried to continue to litigate the issue, which was disposed of last week in Gaffers v. Kelly Servs., Inc., No. 16-2210 (6th Cir. 2018).  And now the Sixth Circuit has addressed whether Epic Systems would apply to arbitration agreements with putative independent contractors who contended that they should have been treated as employees.

After the Eleventh Circuit’s holding in Asalde v. First Class Parking Systems LLC 894 F.3d 1248 (11th Cir. 2018), more small employers may be subject to the requirements of the FLSA.  By expanding the “handling clause,” the case chips away at the degree of interstate commerce necessary for the FLSA to apply.

Andrea Mickles filed a complaint against her employer Country Club Inc., alleging it had violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by improperly classifying her and other employees as independent contractors and failing to pay them minimum wage and overtime.  She filed her case as a collective action, and others opted into the case before any ruling on conditional certification.  Those opt-ins eventually provided the Eleventh Circuit with an opportunity to address an issue of first impression in any Circuit: What is the status of individuals who opt into a case that is never conditionally certified?

On March 26, 2018, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Resh v. China Agritech, Inc., a case that could have far-reaching implications in the class action context.  Resh addresses the interplay of successive class actions and the statute of limitations, specifically, whether a plaintiff can pursue a class action after the statute of limitations has run.  Although the issue arose in a securities case, the Court’s ruling will affect class actions and time bars in all areas, including employment.

When a party receives an adverse order on a motion for class certification, whether the court of appeals grants permission to appeal under Rule 23(f) can be a crucial turning point in the case.  If the appellate court will not hear this interlocutory appeal, the only way to obtain review of that decision is to take the case through trial, to a final judgment.  But, due to the high stakes and large costs involved, few class actions are tried and cases often settle after the class certification order is issued by the trial court.

On January 31, 2017, President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the nearly year-long vacancy on the Supreme Court left by Justice Scalia.  Judge Gorsuch, currently on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeal, is likely a welcome choice for employers.  His employment decisions generally—though not always—have favorable outcomes for employers.  However, he does not appear to be a trailblazer on employment issues, but rather applies established precedent that generally favors employers.  His employment decisions do not tend to draw dissent, bolstering the view that his opinions are not significant departures from Tenth Circuit and Supreme Court precedent.  (Of course, not all agree.  Senator Elizabeth Warren describes him as having “twisted himself into a pretzel to make sure the rules favor giant companies over workers and individual Americans.  He has sided with employers who deny wages, improperly fire workers, or retaliate against whistleblowers for misconduct.  He has ruled against workers in all manner of discrimination cases.”)

On October 5, 2016, the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, held that an unsuccessful job applicant “cannot sue an employer for disparate impact [under § 4(a)(2) of the ADEA] because [an] applicant has no ‘status as an employee.’”  Villarreal v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., --- F.3d ---, No. 15-10602, 2016 WL 5800001, at *1 (11th Cir. Oct. 5, 2016).

Originally published by Construction Business Owner

By now, the employer community is well aware of the wide-ranging implications of Browning-Ferris Industries of California, Inc., 362 N.L.R.B. No. 186 (2015) (Browning-Ferris)—a decision that upended decades of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) precedent and dramatically expanded the definition of “joint employer” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). On August 16, 2016, in Retro Environmental, Inc./Green JobWorks, LLC , 364 N.L.R.B. No. 70, 2016 WL 4376615 (August 16, 2016) ( Retro), the NLRB applied ...

In a decision that could trigger similar action in multiple states, the Fifth Circuit recently decided that an employee could bring a wrongful-termination claim in Mississippi after being terminated for having a gun in his truck, which was parked on company property.   Following the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision on referral, the Fifth Circuit held that a Mississippi statute—which prohibits employers from establishing, maintaining, or enforcing policies that prohibit an employees from storing a firearm in a vehicle on company property and from taking action against an employee who violates that policy—creates an exception to the state’s employment-at-will doctrine.

In Bodine v. Cook's Pest Control Inc., No. 15-13233, 2016 WL 4056031 (11th Cir. July 29, 2016), the Eleventh Circuit held that a forced-arbitration agreement in an employment contract is enforceable, despite the fact that certain provisions of the arbitration agreement violated the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (“USERRA”).

Rodney Bodine, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, was part of the sales force at Cook’s Pest Control, Inc. (“Cook’s”) in Alabama. His employment contract with Cook’s contained an arbitration clause, which included ...

On March 17, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided Graziadio v. Culinary Institute of America, holding that sufficient evidence existed to find that the Culinary Institute of America’s (“CIA”) human resources director was an “employer” under the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) and could therefore be held individually liable for violations of the FMLA. In reaching this decision, the court found that the economic-realities test used to analyze whether an individual is an “employer” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) should also be used to determine whether an individual is an “employer” under the FMLA. The Second Circuit vacated and remanded the Southern District of New York’s summary judgment decision on the question of individual liability for further consideration under the economic-realities standard. The application of this test likely means an increased risk of individual liability for human resources directors, supervisors, and other members of management charged with violating an employee’s rights under the FMLA.

On January 20, 2016, the administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), David Weil, issued an “Administrator’s Interpretation” (AI) regarding the agency’s interpretation of joint employment under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA). The new AI purports to clarify the WHD’s position that joint employment under these statutes “should be defined expansively.” When considered alongside the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB or the Board) controversial ...

For years, there has been nearly universal agreement among the courts that managers do not engage in “protected activity” for retaliation claim purposes under most employment laws when they raise concerns about compliance issues in the regular course of performing their job duties. The traditional reasoning held that a manager whose job includes evaluating and/or reporting compliance issues, and who does so in furtherance of his or her job duties, should not become cloaked in anti-retaliation protection for merely doing the job he or she is employed to do. Instead, to engage in protected activity, the manager must step outside his or her role as a manager and become adversarial to the employer. The so-called “manager rule” has been consistently used by courts to reject retaliation claims under various employment statutes by human resources professionals and supervisors who report employment-related compliance issues related to other employees.

In its recent decision in David Baldwin v. Dep’t of Transportation, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080 (July 15, 2015), the EEOC ruled that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, despite the fact that Title VII does not explicitly include sexual orientation or gender identity in its list of protected bases.