Whether the Fair Labor Standards Act requires courts to apply a uniform, predictable test for distinguishing between employees and independent contractors, or whether the current multi-factor 'economic realities' test improperly creates legal uncertainty in worker classification

No question identified. : 1. This case involves a dispute arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), pertaining to hundreds of thousands of shifts worked by more than 1100 nurses beginning in 2015 through January 2022 at dozens of medical facilities spread across multiple states. Applicant Steadfast was founded in 2015 by Applicant Lisa Pitts, a single mother of four and Navy veteran who had worked for more than 20 years as a Licensed Practical Nurse. Steadfast provides a registry service through which approved nurses seek and receive shifts at the independently owned healthcare facilities that are Steadfast’s customers. The core dispute in this lawsuit initiated by the United States Department of Labor is whether Steadfast properly classified these nursing workers as independent contractors, or whether the nurses who obtained shifts through the registry must instead be deemed “employees” of Steadfast under the FLSA. 2. On appeal from a bench-trial decision finding in favor of DOL, a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, and held that Steadfast ought to have classified the nurses as employees. Op. at 30. The majority (in alignment with most other Circuits) approached the FLSA classification issue through the lens of a multifactor “economic realities” test that is notoriously malleable, originating under a different statute and devised for a different purpose, and that has never been expressly adopted or approved by this Court as the proper framework for FLSA “employee vs. independent contractor” classification disputes. Jd. at 31-33. 3. Judge Richardson, in a lengthy dissent, highlighted the danger of the majority's reasoning, which arbitrarily elevated inconsequential elements within the working relationship through an approach that ends in a “stretched out economic realities test” that “could cover most any economic arrangement.” Jd. at 72, 87 (Richardson, J., dissenting). As Judge Richardson correctly warned, the majority’s approach reflects a hazardous dynamic in which the Fourth Circuit moves FLSA worker classification jurisprudence in one direction, while the economy in which workers must actually compete and earn a living is moving in the other. Jd. at 100-101 (emphasizing that registry services such as Steadfast are a vital tool for workers who increasingly do not wish to risk “tether[ing] their fortunes to those of a single employer,” and instead count on registrytype structures to access the full range of market opportunities while still setting their own hours and relying upon their own equipment and skills). 4, While this case has obvious importance for the parties involved and the nursing profession and healthcare system as a whole, there are at least two reasons why the broader implications of this worker classification dispute present issues that can and should be addressed by this Court. 5. First, as Judge Richardson noted in dissent, the multi-factor economic realities test used by the panel (and most other Circuits) originates in a line of this Court’s cases that were not interpreting the FLSA, did not purport to consider or construe the FLSA’s language, and have since been overruled or abandoned. Jd. at 75-76 & n.1 (discussing extent to which Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden, 503 U.S. 318 (1992) curtails use of judicially created multi-factor tests for determining “employee” status untethered from specific statutory language, thus “abrogating” the applicability of earlier cases such as United States v. Silk, 331 U.S. 704 (1947) and N.L.R.B. v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111 (1944)). There may be no more pressing issue in the modern economy than the extent to which companies will continue to afford opportunities to human workers when balanced against technological innovations that to varying degrees may displace human labor. The FLSA is the primary federal statutory tool through which ordinary working relationships are classified and mediated. This case of