U.S. Labor Department Acknowledges “Important Role Legitimate Independent Contractors Play in Our Economy”: June 2022 IC Legal News Update
The U.S. Labor Department has been playing musical chairs in its approach to classifying workers as independent contractors or employees under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act since the middle of the Obama Administration. But the regulatory initiatives by the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have little impact on the legal landscape of independent contractor law. In 2015, when the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Obama Administration’s Labor Department issued an Administrator’s Interpretation, our blog post was titled: “The Labor Department’s New Guidance on Independent Contractor Misclassification Is Nothing New Legally.” Five years later, when the Labor Department under the Trump Administration issued a proposed regulation that was finalized just before the onset of the Biden Administration, our blog post bore the heading “Much Ado About (Almost) Nothing.” And when the Biden Administration issued a rule withdrawing the prior administration’s regulation, our blog post was called “Independent Contractor Misclassification Ping Pong.” Last month, the Labor Department notified the public that it plans to issue yet another regulation on this issue. When issued, it too will have little legal significance because the U.S. Department of Labor does not decide FLSA cases, only the courts do. Indeed, the federal courts have been doing so for decades, developing their own versions of the so-called “economic realities test” for independent contractor status, based on a standard first enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court many years ago.
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