18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

288 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition those set by the FLSA. The Court rejected Defendant’s arguments. It found that Plaintiffs’ state law overtime claims or other overtime claims based on state payday statutes were not preempted by the FLSA. The Court opined that a finding of preemption would bar enforcement of all state wage & hour laws that did not exceed the standards of the FLSA, a significant intrusion on state authority and a reversal of the traditional presumption against preemption, which is particularly strong given states’ lengthy history of regulating wages and hours. The Court, however, granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss as to some of the state law claims for reasons other than preemption, including that the claims were time-barred under the statute of limitations. For these reasons, the Court granted in part and denied in part Defendants’ motion to dismiss. Mauia, et al. v. Petrochem Insulation, Inc., 5 F.4th 1068 (9th Cir. 2021) . Plaintiff alleged that Defendant failed to provide meal and rest breaks to workers on oil platforms off the coast of California. The District Court granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that the laws cited by Plaintiffs did not apply to off-shore work. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court’s ruling. Pursuant to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”), all law on the Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”) is federal law and state law is adopted on the OCS only to the extent it is applicable and not inconsistent with federal law. Id . at 1070. The Ninth Circuit explained that in Parker Drilling Management Services v. Newton, 39 S. Ct. 1881 (2019),the U.S. Supreme Court held that there must be a gap in federal law before state law will apply on the OCS. Id . The District Court had looked first to state law and compared California’s provisions against the protections provided by federal law to determine whether there is a gap between the two schemes. The District Court found a gap because California law provided “a minimum number of meal periods that must be given, when they must be given, and a remedy for the employee if they are not." Id . at 1074. California law also required a rest period of 10 minutes for each four-hour work period. The District Court found no such federal law, explaining that only computation of hours worked for purposes of determining overtime pay was required. The Ninth Circuit determined that since the OCS applies federal law, it was appropriate to begin with the presumption that federal law applied, and state law is adopted only to fill gaps in federal law. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the fact that federal law did not provide the same meal and rest period protections specifically did not mean that there was a gap in federal law or that federal law did not address meal and rest periods. Id . The Ninth Circuit observed that the FLSA requires that all rest periods must be counted as work time and that any meal period during which an employee is not "completely relieved from duty" must be counted as work time. Id . Thus, the Ninth Circuit held that federal law addressed meal and rest periods, and California law did not provide the rule of decision for meal and rest time claims arising on the OCS. For these reasons, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court’s ruling granting Defendant’s motion to dismiss. Moreau, et al. v. Medicus HealthCare Solutions, LLC , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44780 (D.N.H. March 20, 2021). Plaintiff, a nurse practitioner, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant misclassified nurse practitioners as independent contractors, and thereby failed to pay them overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. Defendant filed a motion requesting that the Court bifurcate this case to address the issue of whether Plaintiff was properly classified as an independent contractor before considering whether to grant conditional certification as a collective action. Id . at *3. The Court denied the motion. Defendant contended that the most efficient way to adjudicate the lawsuit would be to address the merits of the classification claim before considering conditional certification of the collective action. However, the Court noted that Defendant had not yet filed a dispositive motion, and therefore, it was requesting a ruling on the merits of Plaintiff’s claim. The Court determined that Defendant failed to show that such a ruling would be appropriate. The Court reasoned that the weight of case law authority directed it to consider conditional certification early in the case and without considering the merits of the claim, and Defendant failed to provide any persuasive authority that would allow it to avoid consideration of a motion for conditional certification simply because it might be easier to address classification before a collective action is conditionally certified. Id . at *6. Accordingly, the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion to bifurcate. Ndambi, et al. v. CoreCivic, Inc., 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 6478 (4th Cir. March 5, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) civil detainees, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant failed to pay wages for when they performed work while detained. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss, which the District Court granted. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s ruling. The Fourth Circuit explained that the FLSA was enacted to protect workers who operate within "the traditional