NT Lakis attorneys have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in an important case regarding the appropriate test to apply for determining joint employer liability under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Our brief urges the High Court to review and reverse a problematic ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that upended more than 30 years of established legal precedent.
In a ruling earlier this year, the appeals court held for the first time that unless a contractor can show that it is “completely disassociated” from its subcontractors — arguably an impossible task given the nature of today’s subcontracting relationships — the contractor may be subject to joint employer liability under the FLSA if it exerted even indirect influence over the terms and conditions of its subcontractors’ employees.
Our brief argues that in holding that a court must first examine the relationship between the companies at issue rather than the economic realities of the relationship, the Fourth Circuit has inexplicably departed from the traditional joint employer test applied in FLSA cases by virtually every other federal appeals court for the last three decades.
A copy of our brief to the Supreme Court is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.