Coalition for Workforce Innovation v. Su

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to provide minimum wages and other benefits to “employees.” Often, however, employers misclassify employees as independent contractors. In 2021, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a regulation setting forth a view about how to determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor for purposes of the FLSA that departed from the longstanding approach used by DOL and courts. In 2024, the Department issued a new regulation, rescinding the 2021 regulation and setting out the factors that the agency would consider moving forward.

Business groups challenged the 2024 regulation in a Texas district court. On behalf of Public Citizen and the National Employment Law Project (NELP), we filed an amicus brief in support of DOL. The brief explains that misclassification of workers is a significant problem, that the 2021 regulation risked exacerbating that problem, and that the 2024 regulation was a reasonable step to eliminate that increased risk.

Similar cases are pending in district courts in Tennessee, New Mexico, and Georgia and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where we also filed amicus briefs.