The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is seen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
(Reuters) - A federal ban on retaliating against workers who are “about to testify” in a wage-and-hour lawsuit also protects those who are about to join the lawsuit as plaintiffs, a U.S. appeals court held in a groundbreaking decision.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday reversed a win for Cabot Oil & Gas Corp in an action filed by Matthew Uronis, who alleged that the company denied him a job at one of its subsidiaries in 2019 because it expected him to join a former co-worker’s lawsuit for overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
A federal judge in Scranton, Pennsylvania dismissed Uronis’s lawsuit last year, holding that the FLSA’s anti-retaliation provisions did not protect him because he was neither a plaintiff nor “about to testify” in the co-worker’s lawsuit when Cabot turned down his application.
In the lower court’s view, “about to testify” meant scheduled to testify, or at least subpoenaed to do so. The 3rd Circuit, however, said such a narrow reading of the anti-retaliation rule would “gut” the FLSA’s purpose of protecting workers.
Instead, it read “testify” broadly, to include filing any “informational statement” with a court or other governmental agency.
“A consent to join a FLSA collective action is just that,” Circuit Judge L. Felipe Restrepo wrote, joined by Circuit Judges Jane Roth and Julio Fuentes. The...
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