The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Department of Labor regulation exempting home care workers from the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act June 11 in Long Island Care at Home v. Coke. A 1974 FLSA amendment excludes from minimum and overtime wage requirements domestic workers who “provide companionship services for individuals.” At issue in the case was whether Congress intended to exclude all domestic workers from the FLSA's protections or whether the amendment was meant only to apply to workers who are paid directly by the individual in whose home they work.

The ruling affects an estimated 1.4 million domestic workers in the U.S., including those caring for an elderly population expected to double as baby boomers age. According to the AARP, by 2030 the country will need 5.7 to 6.6 million caregivers to care for its elderly population.

Plaintiff Evelyn Coke, a domestic worker, sued her former employer, Long Island Care at Home, in 2002, alleging that she was entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay under FLSA because she the third-party employer rather than by the patients she cared for paid her. In a decision written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court overturned the 2nd Circuit decision and gave the Department of Labor the authority to answer questions about which companionship workers, if any, should be covered under FLSA.

Removing domestic service employees such as Coke from the exemption, Breyer wrote, “would extend the Act's coverage not simply to third-party-employed companionship workers paid by large institutions, but also to those paid directly by a family member of an elderly or infirm person … whenever the family member lived in a different household than the invalid”–clearly not the original intention of the act, according to the Supreme Court. So, unless the DOL amends its regulations, the exemption stands.

In a 2nd Circuit Court brief supporting the plaintiff, the AARP wrote that the exemption “will only help to perpetuate the already existing shortage of these workers,” noting that care workers like Coke “were not intended to be exempt from the basic FLSA protections and should not be.”