{"id":9366,"date":"2026-01-07T17:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T17:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/supreme-court-to-clarify-which-workers-can-avoid-arbitration\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T16:27:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:27:47","slug":"supreme-court-to-clarify-which-workers-can-avoid-arbitration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/supreme-court-to-clarify-which-workers-can-avoid-arbitration\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court to Clarify Which Workers Can Avoid Arbitration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Supreme Court will hear a decision examining the scope of an exemption from the Federal Arbitration Act with potentially significant ramifications.<\/p>\n

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On October 20, 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Flowers Foods, Inc. <\/em>v. Brock<\/em> to decide whether local \u201clast-mile\u201d delivery drivers who never cross state lines themselves, but who deliver products that have traveled in interstate commerce, are covered by the Federal Arbitration Act\u2019s (\u201cFAA\u201d) exemption for transportation workers.<\/p>\n

The FAA, which generally provides that arbitration agreements are \u201cvalid, irrevocable, and enforceable,\u201d includes an exemption for \u201cseamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.\u201d Courts, however, have differed about which workers qualify as being engaged in interstate commerce.\u00a0As we previously discussed, in 2022 the Supreme Court ruled that workers \u201cwho load cargo on and off airplanes belong to a \u2018class of workers in foreign or interstate commerce\u2019\u201d to which the FAA does not apply.<\/p>\n

The case stems from a dispute in Colorado federal court between Angelo Brock, a delivery driver, and Flowers Foods, Inc. (\u201cFlowers\u201d), a national baked goods company. Brock alleged wage-and-hour violations under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, and Flowers sought to compel arbitration under the FAA.<\/p>\n

On November 12, 2024, the Tenth Circuit ruled in Brock\u2019s favor, holding that his claims could proceed in court because he qualified for the FAA\u2019s transportation worker exemption. The court\u2019s analysis turned on what it described as \u201cthe mechanics of the delivery itself.\u201d Delivery drivers like Brock help Flowers get its products onto retail shelves: \u00a0retail stores stock baked goods supplied by Brock, who delivers the products from Flowers. As the court noted, Brock \u201cstarts the interstate-delivery process\u201d by ordering products made in out-of-state bakeries. Flowers then ships the products to a local warehouse, and Brock picks them up within a day of delivery and brings them to retail stores. For example, when a supermarket in Colorado orders Wonder Bread, Brock buys the bread, baked in out-of-state facilities, from Flowers, collects it from a nearby warehouse, and delivers it to the supermarket.<\/p>\n

The Tenth Circuit concluded that Brock\u2019s intrastate route \u201cforms the last leg of the products\u2019 continuous interstate [journey],\u201d making him \u201can integral part of a single, unbroken stream of interstate commerce.\u201d Citing the First Circuit\u2019s decision in Waithaka<\/em> v. Amazon.com, Inc<\/em>. and the Ninth Circuit\u2019s decision in Rittmann<\/em> v. Amazon.com, Inc.<\/em>, both of which treated last-mile delivery drivers as part of interstate commerce and therefore outside the FAA\u2019s reach, the court distinguished Brock from purely local couriers.<\/p>\n

After losing in the Tenth Circuit, Flowers Foods, Inc. petitioned the Supreme Court to review the decision. The company urged the Court to adopt the approach taken by the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, which focus on the type of work the driver performs, such as whether the driver crosses state lines, rather than on whether the goods themselves have moved in interstate commerce.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling could have broad implications for the enforceability of arbitration agreements, particularly for employers that rely on distributors.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court will hear a decision examining the scope of an exemption from the Federal Arbitration Act with potentially significant ramifications. *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0* On October 20, 2025, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1713,5130,5474,143,533,499],"class_list":["post-9366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-arbitration","tag-avoid","tag-clarify","tag-court","tag-supreme","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9386,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions\/9386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}