Justices validate arbitration exemption for “last-mile” drivers

Yesterday’s determination in Flowers Meals v. Brock held that an exemption from the Federal Arbitration Act for interstate transportation employees extends to “last-mile” drivers who don’t themselves cross state traces, regardless that the products they’re delivering are on an interstate journey. That holding protects them from the FAA’s requirement that they litigate disputes with their employers in arbitration versus a court docket.

Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for a unanimous court docket is as succinct as you’d anticipate from the one-sided dialogue at oral argument. He begins by stating that the court docket lately has thought of the interstate transportation exception from the FAA “no fewer than thrice,” and that it has “rejected efforts to cabin its attain” on every event. After summarizing the earlier holdings he bluntly states: “Make this case the fourth.” The “sole concept” that the employer presents, he emphasizes, is that to qualify for the interstate transportation exception “a employee should both cross state traces or work together with a automobile that does (say, by loading or unloading the products it carries).”

Gorsuch mainly makes two factors. First, as you may anticipate, he suggests we “[s]tart with the statutory textual content,” which protects “employees engaged in … interstate commerce.” As a result of “interact,” when the statute was written (as now) means “to participate in” or to be “concerned” with, “[n]othing … requires a person to cross state traces or work together with a automobile that does.” Though interstate commerce might require “transporting merchandise ‘between factors in a single state and factors in one other state[,]’ … an individual can ‘participate’ … or be ‘concerned’ in that steady journey with out leaving a State or touching autos that do.”

Gorsuch affords a hypothetical (modeled on the extremely profitable merchandise of the employer Flowers Meals) of a contract by an organization in a single state to buy a truckload of Butterscotch Krimpets from an organization that’s primarily based in and makes the Krimpets in one other state. He posits the concept that the vendor

hires three drivers to make the supply. Driver 1 takes the Krimpets from [the] bakery proper as much as the border …. Driver 2 then picks up the Krimpets, drives ten ft throughout the border, places the Krimpets down once more, and heads off. Lastly, Driver 3 picks up the Krimpets and delivers them to [the buyer]. Who was engaged in interstate commerce?

Below the rule the employer affords, solely Driver 2. However for Gorsuch “that can’t be proper. Every of the drivers performed a direct, energetic, and vital half in making certain the Krimpets obtained from a degree in [the state of the bakery] to some extent in [the state of the buyer] because the contract required.”

Gorsuch’s second level is that this type of multi-step transportation association “is hardly a hypothetical in any respect,” because the court docket thought of it in no less than 4 instances within the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These instances all decided that specific transactions concerned “interstate commerce” for functions of the commerce clause of the Structure, which grants Congress the facility to manage interstate commerce. For instance, the earliest of the instances concerned “a steamer transporting items on Grand River operated ‘completely throughout the limits of’ … Michigan.” As a result of the steamer “was employed in transporting items destined for different states,” Gorsuch explains, the court docket held that it “was engaged in commerce between the states.”

Gorsuch acknowledges that numerous details of the worker’s operations may help a conclusion that this specific transaction didn’t contain interstate commerce, however he stops wanting contemplating their relevance, explaining that the employer “doesn’t ask us to determine their authorized significance,” as a result of the employer “ventures all of it upon one forged, asking us to undertake a bright-line rule that a person can by no means qualify for [the] exemption until he crosses state traces or interacts with autos that do.” For Gorsuch, “no matter different limits [the statute] might or might not include, we don’t see how the statutory textual content can help that one.”

On the problems earlier than the court docket, I doubt this case will make numerous waves, because it upheld the judgment of the decrease court docket. At most, I’d say, it can give decrease courts warning in construing the exemption so narrowly. Additionally, Gorsuch’s pointed reference to 4 consecutive instances upholding the claims of workers to the exemption most likely is not going to go unnoticed.