Lawsuit: American Care Partners at Home Robbed Employees of FLSA Protections

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A former employee of American Care Partners at Home, Inc. has filed suit against the company alleging it misclassified her as an independent contractor in an attempt to avoid paying her overtime wages. The plaintiff says she worked for the defendant as a Certified Nursing Assistant between May 2014 and May 2016. She claims she was classified as an employee until January 2015, when her employer informed her that she would be considered an independent contractor if she intended to continue working more than 40 hours per week. Notably, the suit alleges, the U.S. Department of Labor instituted new regulations that were to take effect in January 2015 and provided that domestic service workers employed by third-party agencies, such as the plaintiff, would no longer be exempt from Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime requirements.

The plaintiff alleges that her relationship with her employer did not change once she was reclassified as an independent contractor. According to the complaint, the defendant maintained control over all aspects of the plaintiff’s job, including her uniform, rate of pay, and the tasks she was to perform, suggesting that she should have been considered an employee and granted FLSA protections.

The suit argues that the defendants’ reclassification was an attempt to avoid paying overtime wages and shirk its other responsibilities to employees. The complaint describes the company’s conduct as a “scheme” initiated by the defendant to rob employees of their due wages and “improperly reap other benefits, including reducing its tax liability, avoiding workers’ compensation, and passing operating costs on to its workforce.”