Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke
Coke, a home healthcare attendant, sued her employer, Long Island Care at Home, Ltd., alleging that they did not pay her minimum wage or overtime compensation. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) generally generally requires employers to pay minimum wage and overtime, but has an exemption for “companionship services,” as defined and interpreted by regulations issued by the Department of Labor (DOL). The district court ruled in favor of the defendants and dismissed the case.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. It found that the DOL regulation that applied the exemption to home healthcare attendants employed by an agency was not entitled to deference unless it was persuasive within the context of the entire statutory scheme. The Court rejected the persuasiveness of the regulation, finding it inconsistent with Congress’s likely purpose in enacting the FLSA, inconsistent with other DOL regulations, inconsistent with other DOL positions over time, and insufficiently explained by DOL, evidencing a lack of thorough consideration..
Questions Presented:
1. Whether the Second Circuit erred in refusing to give deference under Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Def Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), to a thirty-year old Department of Labor regulation—a regulation that has twice been upheld by the Tenth Circuit—on the ground that, even though it was promulgated under express grants of legislative authority and after full notice-and-comment rulemaking, the regulation was contained in a subpart headed “Interpretations.”
2. Whether, in holding that a longstanding Department of Labor regulation was not persuasive and thus undeserving of any deference underSkidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), the Second Circuit erred by failing to address the governing provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and by declining to give any weight to the Department’s interpretation of its own regulations.
