Paul DeCamp Quoted in “Labor Agency’s Gig Worker Flip-Flopping Weakens Rules in Court”

Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in the Bloomberg Law Daily Labor Report, in “Labor Agency’s Gig Worker Flip-Flopping Weakens Rules in Court,” by Parker Purifoy.

Following is an excerpt:

The Labor Department’s ever-shifting standards for defining independent contractors, combined with US Supreme Court precedent weakening agency authority, will likely diminish the impact of new Trump rulemaking on gig worker litigation.

Last week, the DOL proposed rescinding a Biden-era rule that made it harder to classify workers as contractors not entitled to wage and other employment protections. If finalized, it would largely mark the return to a more business-friendly regulation from the first Trump administration, which itself overrode Obama-era guidance on the hotly contested issue. …

Paul DeCamp, an employer-side attorney with Epstein Becker & Green P.C. and former Wage and Hour Administrator under President George W. Bush, said courts may factor in the rulemaking but will first consider the text of the statute and prevailing circuit court precedent.

“When you have a case where all the factors are pointing in one direction or another, it doesn’t matter what test you use,” he said. “But it’s those interesting cases where some factors point one way and some the other, where we’ll see courts grapple with this rule. It might be an important data point but it won’t be the end of the story.”

If the new Trump rule is challenged, it will be the first time that standard will be tested in court. Biden’s DOL stayed the implementation of the 2021 rule until it could rescind and issue a new one.