Statutory Interpretation Motor Carrier Act Violation.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Leonid Burlaka, et al., v. Contract Transport Services LLC,

Case No.: 19-1703

Officials: KANNE, HAMILTON, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Statutory Interpretation Motor Carrier Act Violation

Leonid Burlaka, Timothy Keuken, Travis Frischmann, and Roger Robinson are truck drivers who brought individual, collective, and class action claims against Contract Transport Services (CTS), their former employer, for failing to provide overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which requires overtime pay for any employee who works more than forty hours in a workweek. 29 U.S.C. 207(a)(1). The entitlement to overtime pay, however, is not absolute: as relevant here, the statute exempts employees who are subject to the Secretary of Transportation's jurisdiction under the Motor Carrier Act (MCA). 29 U.S.C. 213(b)(1). This carveout is known as the "MCA exemption," and its rationale is safety. It is dangerous for drivers to spend too many hours behind the wheel, and "a requirement of pay that is higher for overtime service than for regular service tends to encourage employees to seek" overtime work. Levinson v. Spector Motor Serv., 330 U.S. 649, 657 (1947).

The viability of these claims therefore depends on whether the plaintiffs are subject to the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Transportation, which extends "over transportation by motor carrier and the procurement of that transportation, to the extent that passengers, property, or both[] are transported by motor carrier between a place in a State and a place in another State." 49 U.S.C. 13501(1)(A). Importantly, drivers need not actually drive in interstate commerce to fall within the Secretary's jurisdiction. As the Department of Transportation has explained through a notice of interpretation, the MCA exemption applies even to drivers who have not driven in interstate commerce so long as they are employed by a carrier that "has engaged in interstate commerce and that the driver could reasonably have been expected to make one of the carrier's interstate runs." Application of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, 46 Fed. Reg. 37,902, 37,903 (July 23, 1981).

The plaintiffs make several weak attempts to undermine this conclusion. First, they argue that as spotters, they were not likely to be given over-the-road assignments. Thus, they claim, there was only a "remote" chance that they'd be sent on interstate runs...