The latest from Work Matters
| SCOTUS: Oral complaints can qualify as "filed" for FLSA purposes |
| Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. The issue? To merit protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act's anti-retaliation provision, must an employee make a written complaint of an FLSA violation to an employer, or will an oral one suffice? By a 6-2 vote, with Justice Elena Kagan recusing herself, the court said an oral complaint is good enough. The decision hinged on the words of the FLSA. The law, enacted in 1938, forbids employers from firing or discriminating against any employee because such employee has "filed any complaint." What, then, does it mean to "file" a complaint? Well, SCOTUS reasoned that the phrase "any complaint" suggests a broad interpretation that would include an oral complaint. That's the English lesson for the day. But there is a history lesson, as well, from SCOTUS, in a majority opinion written by Justice Stephen G. Breyer (pictured): "Why would Congress want to limit the enforcement scheme's effectiveness by inhibiting use of the Act's complaint procedure by those who would find it difficult to reduce their complaints to writing, particularly illiterate, less educated, or overworked workers?" As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in oral argument , many of those most affected by the law would be immigrants whose language and written skills could be lacking. SCOTUS lays out the meaning of "file," saying it agrees with the government's claim at oral argument that a complaint qualifies as filed when " 'a reasonable, objective person would have understood the employee' to have 'put the employer on notice that [the] employee is asserting statutory rights under the [Act].' " SCOTUS goes on to illuminate this standard: "To fall within the scope of the antiretaliation provision, a complaint must be sufficiently clear and detailed for a reasonable employer to understand it, in light of both content and context, as an assertion of rights protected by the statute and a call for their protection." Nice phrasing: a "call for their protection." It goes to SCOTUS' belief, in this case and others, that if Congress gives an employee a right (say, to overtime pay), then courts must protect the employee's access to that right. I think SCOTUS came to the pro-access decision it wanted to reach and backed into the reasoning. It reminds me of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," when he explains to a puzzled Alice, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." |
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