WILLIAM L. BURRELL, JR.; JOSHUA HUZZARD; DAMPSEY STUCKEY v. TOM STAFF, Individually; LOUIS DENAPLES, individually; DOMINICK DENAPLES; LACKAWANNA RECYCLING CENTER INC; COUNTY OF LACKAWANNA; LACKAWANNA COUNTY SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY
No. 21-2846
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
February 8, 2023
PRECEDENTIAL
Argued July 14, 2022
Appellants
*(Pursuant to Rule 12(a), Fed. R. App. P.)
On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
(District Court Civil No. 3-14-cv-01891)
District Judge: Honorable Robert D. Mariani
BEFORE: GREENAWAY, JR., MATEY, and NYGAARD, Circuit Judges
Jacob Demree
Sanders K. Gilmer
Alessandra Lopez
Madeline Meth
Samuel Myers
Jacob Rosen
Daniel Wassim
Brian S. Wolfman
Georgetown University Law Center
Appellate Courts Immersion Clinic
600 New Jersey Avenue
Suite 312
Washington, DC 20001
Matthew K. Handley
Rachel E. Nadas
Handley Farah & Anderson
200 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Seventh Floor
Washington, DC 20001
Marielle R. Macher
Community Justice Project
118 Locust Street
Harrisburg, PA 17101
Juno Turner [Argued]
Towards Justice
P.O. Box 371680
Pmb 44465
Denver, CO 80237
Counsel for Appellants
Philip A. Davolos, III
David E. Heisler [Argued]
Cipriani & Werner
415 Wyoming Avenue
Scranton, PA 18503
Counsel for Appellees Staff, County of Lackawanna
Jeffrey Belardi
Belardi Law Offices
50 Alberigi Drive
Suite 114, The TekRidge Center
Jessup, PA 18434
Christopher R. Nestor
David R. Overstreet [Argued]
Overstreet & Nestor
461 Cochran Road, P.O. Box 237
Pittsburgh, PA 15228
Counsel for Appellees L. DeNaples, D. DeNaples, Lackawanna Recycling Center Inc.
Sarah R. Lloyd [Argued]
Cognetti & Cimini
538 Spruce Street
800 Scranton Life Building
Scranton, PA 18503
Counsel for Appellee Lackawanna County Solid Waste Management Authority
Brianne J. Gorod
Constitutional Accountability Center
1200 18th Street, N.W., Suite 501
Washington, DC 20036
Counsel for Amicus Appellants Constitutional Accountability Center, ACLU of Pennsylvania
Erin H. Flynn
Katherine E. Lamm [Argued]
United States Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section
P.O. Box 14403
Ben Franklin Station
Washington, DC 20044
Counsel for Amicus Curiae United States of America
Catherine Ruckelshaus
National Employment Law Project
90 Broad Street, Suite 1100
New York, NY 10004
OPINION OF THE COURT
NYGAARD, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff child support debtor-civil contemnors brought several claims against Lackawanna County, the County‘s Solid Waste Management Authority, Lackawanna County Recycling Center, Inc. (the private corporation to which the Authority outsources the operation of its Recycling Center, or the “Corporation“) and the Corporation‘s owners (brothers Louis and Dominick DeNaples), arising out of plaintiffs’ nearly unpaid labor at the Recycling Center. The District Court dismissed all claims, and plaintiffs appealed.1
We will affirm dismissal of plaintiffs’ Thirteenth Amendment and Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law claims in full, and of their Trafficking Victims Protection Act (“TVPA“) and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO“) claims against the DeNaples brothers.2
However, we will reverse dismissal of their TVPA claims against the County, the Authority, and the Corporation; their RICO claims against the Corporation; their Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA“) and Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act claims against the County, the Authority, and the Corporation; and their unjust enrichment claims against the County, the Authority, and the Corporation.3
I. BACKGROUND
Plaintiffs William Burrell, Jr., Joshua Huzzard, and Dampsey Stuckey were held in civil contempt and sentenced to incarceration for not paying child support. They challenge Lackawanna County‘s policy of conditioning incarcerated civil contemnor child support debtors’ access to regularly paid work release on first working for half of their sentences sorting through trash at the Recycling Center, in purportedly dangerous and disgusting conditions, for sixty-three cents per hour (five dollars per day), nominally as “community service.”
Burrell first filed a complaint in September 2014 and a First Amended Complaint (“FAC“) in December 2014, both pro se, describing the County‘s policy of conditioning work release on work at the Center, the Center‘s hazardous conditions and subminimum wages, and alleging, as relevant here, Thirteenth Amendment, TVPA, RICO, and state-law claims. Although Burrell did not expressly invoke FLSA, the FAC alleged that he was paid five dollars per day to work forty hours per week at the Center.
The District Court dismissed the amended complaint before service of process. A panel of this Court affirmed in part and vacated in part. Burrell v. Loungo, 750 F. App‘x 149, 160 (3d Cir. 2018). The panel reversed the District Court‘s dismissal of Burrell‘s TVPA and Thirteenth Amendment claims because although Burrell alleged
One might argue, of course, that as a civil contemnor who would be released once he paid his child support obligations, Burrell “carr[ied] the keys of [his] prison in [his] own pockets.” Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431, 441-42 (2011). We leave it to the District Court to consider such an argument.
Id. at 160 n.7. Finally, the panel reversed the District Court‘s dismissal of Burrell‘s RICO claims because that ruling was based on dismissal of his Thirteenth Amendment and TVPA claims—the alleged predicate violations of law for RICO liability. Id. at 160.
On remand, Burrell obtained counsel and filed a Second Amended Complaint (“SAC“), which added Huzzard and Stuckey as plaintiffs and significantly refined its list of defendants, its factual allegations, and its legal claims. The SAC contends that conditioning plaintiffs’ access to work release—which would have enabled them to earn the money they needed to secure their freedom from incarceration—on completing a period of sub-minimum-wage, dangerous, and disgusting work at a private business amounted to involuntary servitude and forced labor, in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment4 and the TVPA,
defendants’ violations of the TVPA as an association in fact was a pattern of racketeering activity under RICO,
After briefing, the District Court granted defendants’ motions to dismiss the SAC. The Court first held that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine did not preclude its jurisdiction over the TVPA and Thirteenth Amendment claims, so long as it did not credit plaintiffs’ allegations that they could not pay their purges (payment of which would effect compliance with their contempt orders and get them out of prison). The Court then concluded that plaintiffs’ Thirteenth Amendment and TVPA claims failed, because the legal requirement that the state court had to find that plaintiffs were able to pay their purges before sentencing them to incarceration for civil contempt meant that plaintiffs could have chosen
Though the District Court dismissed some claims without prejudice, plaintiffs stood on their complaint and sought final judgment, which the District Court issued. Plaintiffs then timely appealed.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
Because this case arises from a motion to dismiss, we conduct a plenary review of the District Court‘s order granting a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, Gelman v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 583 F.3d 187 (3d Cir. 2009), and “accept as true the allegations of the complaint,” Mohamad v. Palestinian Auth., 566 U.S. 449, 452 (2012).
III. DISCUSSION
A. Rooker-Feldman, Issue Preclusion, and Changed Circumstances
1. Rooker-Feldman Doctrine
“In certain circumstances, where a federal suit follows a state suit, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine prohibits the district court from exercising jurisdiction. The doctrine takes its name from the only two cases in which the Supreme Court has applied it to defeat federal subject-matter jurisdiction[.]” Great W. Mining & Min. Co. v. Fox Rothschild LLP, 615 F.3d 159, 163-64 (3d Cir. 2010). The doctrine is narrowly confined to “cases brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the district court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of those judgments,” and “does not otherwise override or supplant preclusion doctrine.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005).
“If a federal plaintiff presents some independent claim, albeit one that denies a legal conclusion that a state court has reached in a case to which he was a party, then there is jurisdiction and state law determines whether the defendant prevails under principles of preclusion.” Id. at 293. That distinction has consequences: ”Rooker-Feldman, unlike claim and issue preclusion, implicates a federal court‘s subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning it cannot be forfeited or waived, and courts must evaluate its applicability sua sponte if it is a concern.” Vuyanich v. Smithton Borough, 5 F.4th 379, 385 (3d Cir. 2021) (cleaned up).
Plaintiffs assert “that they had no option but to work at the Center” and Burrell asserts “that he did not have the ability to pay $2,129.43” his purge amount. App. 62. Whether the purge orders preclude us from entertaining those assertions is a question subsidiary to plaintiffs’ claims. And the “ability to pay” determination in the state court was merely a step towards the state court orders’ ultimate purpose of ordering plaintiffs incarcerated to coerce their payment of overdue child support. As plaintiffs’ claims may deny conclusions reached by the state court, but do not require review and rejection of the orders in which those conclusions were reached, Rooker-Feldman does not thwart federal jurisdiction. See Exxon Mobil Corp., 544 U.S. at 293.
2. Issue Preclusion
The purge orders implicate issue preclusion, which is not a jurisdictional matter but instead an affirmative defense. See
Thus, while plaintiffs have waived, and are precluded from raising, any challenge to the state court findings that they were able to pay at the time the courts imposed their incarceration and purge orders, they are not precluded from contending that they were, at the time of their injuries, when faced with the “community service” scheme at issue here, unable to pay.
3. Changed Circumstances
The District Court, in dismissing plaintiffs’ Thirteenth Amendment and TVPA claims, correctly pointed out that the SAC does not allege that plaintiffs’ circumstances changed between when they were each adjudged able to pay a purge amount and when they began working at the Recycling Center under what they purport was coercion. Plaintiffs, however, respond, also correctly, that they were not required to allege as much in their complaint, as such facts are required only to overcome the affirmative defense of issue preclusion, and “[u]nder Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, a complaint need not anticipate or overcome affirmative defenses’ to state a claim for relief and defeat a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.” Pls.’ Br. at 21 (quoting Schmidt v. Skolas, 770 F.3d 241, 248 (3d Cir. 2014)).
Although they do not allege changed circumstances in their complaint, the facts they do allege support no less than the inference that when faced with the choice of working at the Recycling Center, serving their contempt sentence, or paying their purge amount, plaintiffs were unable to pay. Plaintiffs allege that they worked at the Center because it was the only way they could qualify for work release, without which they could not pay their child support debt and regain their freedom. For just five dollars per day—approximately sixty-two-and-a-half cents per hour—they separated trash and recyclables on conveyor belts, frequently breaking out in skin rashes, suffering wounds from sharp pieces of glass, and vomiting from the stench of their abhorrent working conditions, which includes working in 100 degrees Fahrenheit. App. 132-33 ¶¶ 166-75. The Center provides them with unsanitary toilets that have been out of order and uncleaned for months to relieve themselves and takes away their food as punishment for working too slowly. Id. “[E]vidence of . . . extremely poor working conditions is relevant to corroborate disputed evidence regarding the use . . . of physical or legal coercion . . . or the causal effect of such conduct.” United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 952 (1988). “[N]o individual who could pay his way to freedom would choose to work in the dangerous conditions of the Recycling Center for just five dollars per day.” CAC & ACLU Amicus Br. at 6. Rather, the most plausible inference for why plaintiffs chose to work at the Recycling Center was to access the work release program that would pay them enough to enable them to pay their purge and secure their freedom. Plaintiffs have thus stated plausible facts from which it can be reasonably inferred that they were, at the time of their injuries, unable to pay their purge.
The District Court also erred by requiring plaintiffs to allege why they did not request modification of their support orders in state court. The statute at issue,
The District Court thus erred by dismissing plaintiffs’ Thirteenth Amendment and TVPA claims based on their failure to allege changed circumstances and why they did not seek modification of their support orders. That does not, however, end the inquiry—plaintiffs still must state claims upon which relief can be granted.
B. Thirteenth Amendment
Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
In Kozminski, the Supreme Court held that the phrase “involuntary servitude,” as used in
“Modern day examples of involuntary servitude [under the Thirteenth Amendment] have been limited to labor camps, isolated religious sects, or forced confinement.” Steirer v. Bethlehem Area Sch. Dist., 987 F.2d 989, 999 (3d Cir. 1993). Thus, in Zavala v. Wal Mart Stores Inc., where plaintiff illegal immigrants “allege[d] that they were coerced into working by threats to report their immigration status to authorities,” we held that “[a]bsent some special circumstances, threats of deportation are insufficient to constitute involuntary servitude.”6 691 F.3d 527, 531, 541 (3d Cir. 2012). From Zavala we
C. TVPA
As to their TVPA claims, Plaintiffs allege three theories:
204. During all relevant times, Defendants attempted to and did obtain the labor of Plaintiffs and the Rule 23 Class through threats of continued physical restraint, specifically, by telling Debtors that if they did not work at the Center they would remain ineligible for work release, in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(1) .
205. During all relevant times, Defendants attempted to and did obtain the labor of Plaintiffs and the Rule 23 Class through abuse of law and/or legal process, in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(3) .206. During all relevant times, Defendants attempted to and did obtain the labor of Plaintiffs and the Rule 23 Class by causing Debtors to believe that, if they did not provide labor at the Center, they would suffer continued physical restraint without the ability to participate in work release, in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(4) .
App. 137.
Congress heeded the Court‘s call in Kozminski for legislative action, see 487 U.S. at 951-52, when it passed the TVPA, which defines forced labor broader than Kozminski‘s definition of involuntary servitude as used in the Thirteenth Amendment by criminalizing
knowingly provid[ing] or obtain[ing] the labor or services of a person by any one of, or by any combination of, the following means—
(1) by means of force, threats of force, physical restraint, or threats of physical restraint to that person or another person;
(2) by means of serious harm or threats of serious harm to that person or another person;
(3) by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process; or
(4) by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that, if that person did not perform such labor or services, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint[.]
Congress also broadly defined “abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process” as
the use or threatened use of a law or legal process, whether administrative, civil, or criminal, in any manner or for any purpose for which the law was not designed, in order to exert pressure on another person to cause that person to take some action or refrain from taking some action.
And Congress chose not to include the phrase “involuntary servitude” in the TVPA. Rather, the TVPA clearly encompasses a broad range of conduct which is not limited, as the dissent suggests, to ‘appalling criminal conduct and shocking depravity.‘” See Dissent Op. at n.6. That range of conduct encompasses circumstances in which the person whose labor is being exploited is faced with any number of choices as an alternative to working, including actual or threatened physical restraint, serious harm, and abuse of law or legal process. See
Defendants’ conditioning of plaintiffs’ access to the work release program (which plaintiffs allege they needed to free themselves) on a period of nearly free, grueling labor at the Recycling Center, is an abuse of law or legal process under the TVPA. That is so because it is a use of the work release program in a manner for which it was not designed, in order to pressure plaintiffs to work at the Center.
Plaintiffs argue that
Pennsylvania law authorizes state correctional facilities to implement and operate work-release programs, which enable inmates to temporarily leave their correctional facility to work in the community. But these programs must serve several statutory purposes (and only those purposes): to promote “accountability of offenders to their community,” to provide “opportunities for offenders to enhance their ability to become contributing members of the community,” and to “protect society.”
42 Pa. Stat. and Cons. Stat. § 9803(1)-(4) . Here, the County operated its work-release program in a manner directly at odds with these purposes, manipulating the qualification standards for work-release eligibility solely to gain a pecuniary benefit.
Pls.’ Br. at 31. No defendant challenges this argument. And the placement of Section 9813, “Work release or other court order and purposes,” in Title 42, Chapter 98, “County Intermediate Punishment“—which also includes Section 9803, “Purpose,” the Section relied on by plaintiffs—indicates that Section 9803‘s stated purposes govern county jail work release programs like that which plaintiffs sought to participate in here.
Section 9803 states in full:
County intermediate punishment programs shall be developed, implemented and operated for the following purposes:
- (1) To protect society and promote efficiency and economy in the delivery of corrections services.
-
(2) To promote accountability of offenders to their local community. - (3) To fill gaps in local correctional systems and address local needs through expansion of punishment and services available to the court.
- (4) To provide opportunities for offenders who demonstrate special needs to receive services which enhance their ability to become contributing members of the community.
Again, no defendant contends that conditioning access to work release on a period of dangerous, nearly unpaid labor serves any of those purposes. Rather, the nearly free labor for most of the grunt work at a joint public/private profit-seeking operation seems to be the point. The Professional Service Operating Agreement between the Corporation and the Municipal Authority states that the “Authority shall use its best efforts to . . . provide [the Corporation] with the same number of Prisoners from the Lackawanna County Prison that have historically worked at the Center as part of their work release program as security requirements dictate.” App. 150. Plaintiffs allege that “the only individuals typically performing this work are those from the Prison. The Center does not employ hourly-paid workers to regularly perform this work.” App. 133 ¶ 176. And under the Operating Agreement, “the Authority shall retain the lesser of[] all revenues or the first $60,000.00 of gross revenue.” App. 148. So long as the Center brings in more than $60,000, the Corporation and the Authority share the profits earned by exploiting plaintiffs’ and their purported class members’ nearly free labor—labor which plaintiffs purport to have provided so as to be eligible to later access the work release program, earn real wages, pay their purges, and free themselves from civil incarceration.
That is a clear example of “the use . . . of a law or legal process . . . in a[] manner or for any purpose for which the law was not designed, in order to exert pressure on another person to cause that person to take some action,” which the TVPA defines as an abuse of law or legal process.
The TVPA also proscribes providing or obtaining labor “by any one of, or by any combination of,” the proscribed means.
Several defendants also contest whether they, specifically, can be held liable. The Authority first argues that
Child Support Debtors offend the intent and purpose of the TVPA by essentially analogizing their situations to the serious cases of physical and sexual exploitation of trafficked woman and children intended to be protected by the act. Child Support Debtors were lawfully sentenced to a term of imprisonment where eligibility for traditional work release was lawfully conditioned upon community service. Court ordered Community service is not human trafficking, and the TVPA was never intended to criminalize or impose liability upon governmental, municipal, and private entities and individuals who either offer inmates the opportunity to complete community service or provide a means to actually complete community service.
Auth Br. at 21–22.
But despite its legislative history, the TVPA is not limited to “serious cases of physical and sexual exploitation of trafficked woman and children.” Id. Rather, it applies to “[w]hoever” falls within the reach of its plain text.
The Authority and the Corporation‘s contentions that their alleged conduct was not proscribed by the TVPA similarly fail. The TVPA subjects to liability not only “[w]hoever knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person by any one of, or by any combination of, the” proscribed means, but also “[w]hoever knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of the [proscribed] means . . . knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the venture has engaged in the providing or obtaining of labor or services by any of such means.”
The alleged venture starts with the County‘s policy requiring child support debtor contemnors to work half of their sentences at the Corporation if they want to qualify for work release—which plaintiffs contend they depend on to earn money to free themselves from physical restraint in the form of civil contempt incarceration. That is an abuse of law or legal process as defined by the TVPA.
The County provides the debtors’ labor to the Corporation via the Operating Agreement between the County‘s Municipal Authority and the Corporation, which states that the “Authority shall use its best efforts to . . . provide [the Center] with the same number of Prisoners from the Lackawanna County Prison that have historically worked at the Center as part of their work release program as security requirements dictate.” App. 150. Plaintiffs sufficiently
Plaintiffs also state sufficient facts supporting the reasonable inference that the Authority and the Corporation knew or should have known that the venture used prohibited means to obtain or provide labor. Plaintiffs allege extremely poor working conditions and direct on-site supervision by County and Corporation employees. See Kozminski, 487 U.S. at 952 (stating that “extremely poor working conditions are relevant to . . . the use or threatened use of physical or legal coercion, the defendant‘s intention in using such means, or the casual effect of such conduct.“).7 It is quite plausible to infer from those facts that it was apparent to those employees overseeing plaintiffs’ work that “no individual who could pay his way to freedom would choose to work in the dangerous conditions of the Recycling Center for just five dollars per day.” CAC & ACLU Amicus Br. at 6. Thus, plaintiffs have stated facts supporting the plausible inference that the Corporation should have known that those prisoners working at the Center, including plaintiffs, were made to do so by prohibited means.
And though the County Municipal Authority did not directly oversee plaintiffs’ labor at the Center, the facts alleged suggest the inference that it knew about the venture‘s use of prohibited labor. The Authority is the party that contracted to provide prison labor to the Corporation. As the provider of the prisoners, it is reasonable to infer that the Authority knew that “a significant number of the prisoners supplied by the Authority to LRCI for work at the Center have been placed in the Prison following civil contempt proceedings for failure to pay child support.” App. 130 ¶ 145. And additionally it can be inferred—from several of the Authority‘s obligations in the Operating Agreement, including to “(1) cooperate with Operator in effectuating the transition by providing a transition team to meet with Operator to plan the transition; (2) provide any and all necessary books and records, customer lists, vendor lists, sale invoices, purchase invoices, payroll records, etc.[; and] (3) provide Operator with the same number of Prisoners from the Lackawanna County Prison that have historically worked at the Center as part of their work release program“—that before the Corporation agreed to operate the Center, the Authority itself operated the Center primarily with prison labor. App. 150. There is no reason to think that the disgusting and dangerous nature of the work at the Center was any different before the Corporation took control. Plaintiffs have alleged sufficient factual matter to support the reasonable inference that the Authority knew that plaintiffs’ (and other contemnors‘) work at the Center was obtained and provided by means prohibited by the TVPA—that is, threat of physical restraint and abuse of law or legal process. Thus, plaintiffs have stated a TVPA claim as to the County, the Authority, and the Corporation.
Accordingly, plaintiffs’ TVPA claims against the County, the Authority, and the Corporation should not have been dismissed, but dismissal of their TVPA claims against the DeNaples brothers was appropriate.
D. RICO
The RICO Act,
It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise‘s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt.
Section 1961(1) defines “racketeering activity” to include “any act which is indictable under any of the following provisions of title 18, United States Code: . . . sections 1581-1592 (relating to peonage, slavery, and trafficking in persons).” And
The SAC alleges that all defendants violated RICO by way of their alleged TVPA violations. The District Court dismissed the RICO claims against the Corporation because it found plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege a predicate TVPA violation. And the Court dismissed the RICO claims against the DeNaples brothers because the facts alleged in the SAC “are not sufficient to establish that Louis and Dominick DeNaples personally—separate and apart from their roles as corporate officers—‘conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise‘s affairs, not just their own affairs.‘” App. 66–67 (quoting Cedric Kushner Promotions, Ltd. v. King, 533 U.S. 158, 162 (2001)).
We agree that plaintiffs’ RICO claims against the DeNaples brothers fail, but for a different reason—because plaintiffs’ predicate TVPA claims against them fail. However, plaintiffs’ RICO claims against the Corporation survive. The Corporation contends that plaintiffs have failed to allege that the Corporation engaged in the alleged TVPA violations. But, for the same reason that plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged predicate TVPA venture liability as to the Corporation, they have sufficiently alleged predicate RICO liability as to the Corporation. The allusion to an argument that TVPA venture liability is not a predicate RICO offense has no basis in law. And the Corporation contracting
E. FLSA & Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act
Plaintiffs contend that the Recycling Center, the County, and the Authority violated the FLSA‘s minimum wage protections,
The District Court disagreed, relying on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ rule
that a prerequisite to finding that an inmate has “employee” status under the FLSA is that the prisoner has freely contracted with a non-prison employer to sell his labor. Under this analysis, where an inmate participates in a non-obligatory work release program in which he is paid by an outside employer, he may be able to state a claim under the FLSA for compensation at the minimum wage. However, where the inmate‘s labor is compelled and/or where any compensation he receives is set and paid by his custodian, the prisoner is barred from asserting a claim under the FLSA, since he is definitively not an “employee.” At the pleading stage, this means that a federal prisoner seeking to state a claim under the FLSA must allege that his work was performed without legal compulsion and that his compensation was set and paid by a source other than the Bureau of Prisons itself. Absent such allegations, prison labor is presumptively not “employment” and thus does not fall within the ambit of the FLSA.
Henthorn v. Dep‘t of Navy, 29 F.3d 682, 686–87 (D.C. Cir. 1994). The Court held that plaintiffs’ FLSA claims failed this test (1) because plaintiffs alleged that their labor was compelled, and thus it could not be voluntary—despite the Court previously discrediting plaintiffs’ allegations of compulsion in order to dismiss their TVPA and Thirteenth Amendment claims10—and
1. Joint Employment
The FLSA‘s minimum wage provisions apply to those that fall under the statutory definition of “employees” and “employers.”
The FLSA defines employer and employee broadly “and with ‘striking breadth.‘” In re Enter. Rent-A-Car Wage & Hour Emp. Pracs. Litig., 683 F.3d 462, 467 (3d Cir. 2012) (quoting Rutherford Food Corp. v. McComb, 331 U.S. 722, 730 (1947); Donovan v. DialAmerica Mktg., Inc., 757 F.2d 1376, 1382 (3d Cir. 1985) (“Congress and the courts have both recognized that, of all the acts of social legislation, the Fair Labor Standards Act has the broadest definition of ‘employee.‘“)). That is because the FLSA “is part of the large body of humanitarian and remedial legislation enacted during the Great Depression, and has been liberally interpreted.” Brock v. Richardson, 812 F.2d 121, 123 (3d Cir. 1987). “The Supreme Court has even gone so far as to acknowledge that the FLSA‘s definition of an employer is ‘the broadest definition that has ever been included in any one act.‘” In re Enter. Litig., 683 F.3d at 467–68 (quoting United States v. Rosenwasser, 323 U.S. 360, 363 n.3 (1945)). Moreover, circuit courts have consistently held that prisoners as a class are not exempted from FLSA coverage. Henthorn, 29 F.3d at 685 (citing Vanskike v. Peters, 974 F.2d 806, 808 (7th Cir. 1992)). Congress has laid out “an extensive list of workers who are exempted from FLSA coverage” that does not include prisoners, so it would be an “encroachment upon legislative prerogative for a court to hold that a class of unlisted workers is excluded from the Act.” Carter v. Dutchess Cmty. Coll., 735 F.2d 8, 13 (2d Cir. 1984). FLSA coverage is a highly factual inquiry that requires consideration of “the circumstances of the whole activity . . . rather than any one particular factor.” DialAmerica Mktg., 757 F.2d at 1382 (citing Rutherford Food Corp., 331 U.S. at 730). Accordingly, the FLSA employer/employee determinations must be made in light of the “economic reality” of the parties’ relationship. Goldberg v. Whitaker House Co-op., Inc., 366 U.S. 28, 33 (1961).
In In re Enterprise Litigation, this Court set out the test for whether a defendant is a joint employer. “[D]oes the alleged employer have: (1) authority to hire and fire employees; (2) authority to promulgate work rules and assignments, and set conditions of employment, including compensation, benefits, and hours; (3) day-to-day supervision, including employee discipline; and (4) control of employee records, including payroll, insurance, taxes, and the like.” 683 F.3d at 469. The Court “emphasize[d], however, that these factors do not constitute an exhaustive list of all
this is consistent with the FLSA regulations regarding joint employment, which state that a joint employment relationship will generally be considered to exist where the employers are not completely disassociated with respect to the employment of a particular employee and may be deemed to share control of the employee, directly or indirectly, by reason of the fact that one employer controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with another employer.
Id. at 468 (cleaned up).
In Tourscher v. McCullough, 184 F.3d 236, we held that both pre-trial and convicted inmates are “not entitled to minimum wages under the FLSA” for “intra-prison work.” 184 F.3d 236, 243–44 (3d Cir. 1999). To reach that conclusion as to convicted inmates, we agreed with the ten other circuits that had addressed the question and quoted analysis from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals: “The relationship is not one of employment; prisoners are taken out of the national economy; prison work is often designed to train and rehabilitate; prisoners’ living standards are determined by what the prison provides; and most such labor does not compete with private employers.” Danneskjold v. Hausrath, 82 F.3d 37, 42 (2d Cir. 1996). And we extended that rationale to pre-trial detainees by relying on analysis from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that
The purpose of the FLSA is to protect the standard of living and general well-being of the American worker. Because the correctional facility meets [plaintiff‘s] needs, his standard of living is protected. In sum . . . [plaintiff]‘s situation does not bear any indicia of traditional free-market employment contemplated under the FLSA.
Villarreal v. Woodham, 113 F.3d 202, 207 (11th Cir. 1997) (cleaned up).
Plaintiffs’ work, however, was not the sort of “intra-prison work” for which inmates are categorically “not entitled to minimum wages under the FLSA.” Tourscher, 184 F.3d at 243–44. The Recycling Center is located at an off-site facility to which plaintiffs and their purported class members were transported by County jail guards. The facility is owned by the County Municipal Authority and operated, for the most part, by the Corporation, pursuant to an Operating Agreement between the Authority and the Corporation. Plaintiffs’ off-site work, not done for the benefit of the jail but rather for the benefit of the public-private partnership between the Municipal Authority and the Recycling Center, is markedly different than inmates doing work within a facility “producing goods and services used by the prison” (like plaintiff in Tourscher‘s work in the prison cafeteria).
The Tourscher, Danneskjold, and Villarreal opinions are limited to intra-prison labor, and each acknowledge and distinguish the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ opinion in Watson v. Graves, which held that the FLSA applied to convicted inmates allowed to work for a private construction company outside of the jail. 909 F.2d 1549, 1553–56 (5th Cir. 1990). Watson applied the traditional four-factor economic reality test originated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Bonnette v. California Health and Welfare Agency, which is slightly less detailed than our Enterprise test: “whether the alleged employer (1) had the power to hire and fire the
By contrast, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Henthorn declined to apply the Bonnette test to incarcerated people at all and rejected the relevance of whether they work inside or outside of the prison or for public or private employers, instead asking whether (1) an inmate‘s labor is compelled or voluntary and (2) their wages are set and paid by their custodian or an outside employer. 29 F.3d at 685–87. The plaintiff in Henthorn was a convicted federal prisoner, incarcerated at a federal prison on a naval base, and assigned to work on the grounds of the base outside of the prison. Id. at 683. The D.C. Circuit did not apply the traditional Bonnette economic reality test because “the prisoner is legally compelled to part with his labor as part of a penological work assignment” and “is truly an involuntary servant to whom no compensation is actually owed.” Id. at 686 (citing Vanskike, 974 F.2d at 809 (“Thirteenth Amendment‘s specific exclusion of prisoner labor supports the idea that a prisoner performing required work for the prison is actually engaged in involuntary servitude, not employment.“) and Wilks v. District of Columbia, 721 F. Supp. 1383, 1384 (D.D.C. 1989) (convicted “inmate labor belongs to the penal institution and inmates do not lose their primary status as inmates just because they perform work“)).
As a preliminary matter, none of those cases involve non-convicted inmates like plaintiffs here. And the Henthorn test‘s muddled application to this case proves it too narrow and rigid to serve the FLSA‘s purposes.
As to the first factor, plaintiffs allege that their work was coerced, but as defendants argue, plaintiffs chose to work at the Recycling Center rather than merely complete their contempt sentences. Plaintiffs’ work, as alleged, sits on a razor-thin line between involuntary and voluntary, and whether it falls to either side should be decided on the facts. And no one can say that not convicted plaintiffs’ work belongs to the County or that the Thirteenth Amendment excludes their labor from the prohibition on involuntary servitude.
The second factor—does the custodian or a private party set and provide pay?—is similarly unclear. Plaintiffs allege that the County and its Municipal Authority set inmate pay. While the County alone setting plaintiffs’ pay may seem to weigh in favor of finding that they were not employees (because the County was plaintiffs’ custodian), that is complicated in a case like this, where the County and its Municipal Authority financially benefitted from plaintiffs’ labor. Further, plaintiffs are silent as to who actually paid them, and the County Municipal Authority seems to contend in its briefing that the Recycling Center paid them. See Auth. Br. at 17 (“The Authority did not set or pay any employee wages to either inmates completing community service at the recycling center or standard employees directly hired to work at the recycling center. All wages and compensation were managed and paid by the Center, out of its own contractual consideration.“). And even if the County set and provided plaintiffs’ pay, it did so in furtherance of its business relationship with the Recycling Center Corporation, with whom it operated the Center as a joint public-private venture (through the auspices of the Municipal Authority), to whom it contracted out plaintiffs’ work as off-site sub-minimum wage labor, and who plaintiffs allege jointly controlled plaintiffs’ work along with County jail guards. There is a real difference in the economic relationships
Application of the Enterprise test proves far more useful. Plaintiffs allege the following facts relevant to the Enterprise factors:
- 133. Pursuant to the Operating Agreement, County personnel select Debtors to work at the Center.
- 134. Upon information and belief, County personnel and LRCI personnel have authority to terminate Debtors from their assignments at the Center.
- 135. Defendants LRCI and the Authority jointly determine work rules and assignments.
- 136. Defendants LRCI, the County, and the Authority jointly determine the days and hours during which Debtors will work at the Center.
- 137. County personnel – specifically, prison guards transport Debtors to the Center consistent with agreed-upon work schedules.
- 138. The prison guards remain on site at the Center to supervise Debtors and ensure security.
- 139. The prison guards and Center employees jointly supervise Debtors’ work at the Center, including but not limited to ensuring that prisoners working on the line worked quickly.
- 140. If prisoners on the line did not move quickly enough or failed to remove all the glass from the conveyor belt, the prison guards or Center staff punished them by, for example, omitting portions of their prison-provided lunch.
- 141. Staff at the Center direct Debtors’ work, including but not limited to assigning them to workstations, instructing them how to perform their tasks, and authorizing them to take breaks.
- 142. The Authority and the County set Debtors’ pay at $5 per day.
- 143. Under the terms of the Operating Agreement, LRCI has the authority to set the rates of compensation of any employees of the Center.
App. 129–30 ¶¶ 133–43. These all indicate plaintiffs’ joint employment by the County, its Municipal Authority, and the Corporation.
Also relevant to the economic reality of plaintiffs’ relationships with the County, the Municipal Authority, and the Corporation, is the fact that the County and Authority contracted out plaintiffs’ work to the Corporation for a joint economic benefit. Plaintiffs and their cohort did the facility‘s integral and necessary grunt work of hand-sorting garbage in lieu of the Corporation employing hourly-paid workers. That work “benefited Defendants by reducing the need for paid employees and artificially reducing their labor costs through access to a steady supply of sub-market rate labor for which Defendants did not provide unemployment and health insurance, worker‘s compensation, minimum wages, and/or overtime premiums.” App. 138 ¶ 217. That is true as to the County, which had custody of plaintiffs and provided their labor, and its Municipal Authority, which owned the facility out of which the Recycling Center ran and shared the profits that resulted from its operation. It is also true for the Corporation, which contracted with the County‘s Municipal Authority to run the Recycling Center. Pursuant to the Operating Agreement between the Recycling Center and the Authority, the “Authority shall use its best efforts to . . . provide
[the Center] with the same number of Prisoners from the Lackawanna County Prison that have historically worked at the Center as part of their work release program as security requirements dictate.” App. 150. As such,
The economic reality of plaintiffs’ relationship with the County, its Municipal Waste Management Authority, and the Corporation is only truly understood by looking at all of those facts, which resemble an employee-joint employer relationship far more than the typical forced prison work program.
The purposes underlying the FLSA bolster our conclusion. “The central aim of the Act was to achieve, in those industries within its scope, certain minimum labor standards.” Mitchell v. Robert DeMario Jewelry, Inc., 361 U.S. 288, 292, 80 S.Ct. 332, 335, 4 L.Ed.2d 323 (1960). Congress sought to correct labor conditions that are “detrimental to the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers.”
29 U.S.C. § 202(a) . In addition, the FLSA was intended to prevent unfair competition in commerce from the use of underpaid labor.29 U.S.C. § 202(a)(3) .
While plaintiffs’ basic needs were provided for by Lackawanna County, plaintiffs allege that they were only incarcerated because they were unable to pay their purges. They needed money for a reason that the typical incarcerated person does not: to satisfy their contempt orders and secure their freedom from incarceration. Thus, while courts may conclude that typical prisoners do not need a minimum wage because they are fed and housed by the state, plaintiffs here had a concrete, important financial objective that they contend was the reason they worked at the Center. And as to competition in commerce, the Corporation here surely competed with other local and regional recycling facilities who had to hire employees; the Corporation, on the other hand, got an unfair advantage in the form of nearly free labor funneled from its business partner, the County—who stood to profit from the Corporation‘s success. Plaintiffs’ work at the Center mirrors the work in Watson, where the defendant had access to a “pool of workers” whom he paid “token wages” far below the minimum wage, and “incurred no expenses for overtime, unemployment insurance, social security,” etc. and did not need to worry about competition. Watson, 909 F.2d at 1555. The situations in Watson and here are “the very problems that FLSA was drafted to prevent—grossly unfair competition among employers and employees alike.” Id.
We are not persuaded that the passage of the
Plaintiffs thus sufficiently allege that, while working at the Center, they were the employees of the County, the Authority, and the Corporation, acting as joint employers.
2. Statute of Limitations
The Corporation also argues that Burrell and Huzzard‘s claims are barred by the FLSA‘s statute of limitations, as their violations occurred in 2014 and 2013, respectively, and they did not raise their FLSA claims when plaintiffs filed their Second Amended Complaint in 2019.
Plaintiffs contend that the statute of limitations should be equitably tolled because defendants failed to conspicuously post required notices to alert them to their rights as employees and “actively misled Plaintiffs and members of the FLSA Collective regarding the nature of their relationship with Defendants by suggesting to them that they were not employees with rights but rather prisoners whom Defendants could force to perform work as punishment and as a condition of their liberty,” and “[t]hese actions prevented Plaintiffs and those similarly situated from understanding that they had a right to federal minimum wage during the time they worked at the Center.” App. 127 ¶¶ 118–119.
While we have not decided whether an employer‘s failure to post required FLSA notices, by itself, tolls the statute of limitations, at least one other Court of Appeals has. See Cruz v. Maypa, 773 F.3d 138, 146–47 (4th Cir. 2014). In Cruz, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals extended its prior precedent—holding “that the 180-day filing requirement of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA“) was tolled by reason of the plaintiff‘s employer‘s failure to post statutory notice of workers’ rights under the Act“—to the FLSA context, because “the notice requirements in the ADEA and the FLSA,” and their purposes, “are almost identical,” and, unlike the ADEA, the FLSA lacks an administrative filing requirement. Id. (citing Vance v. Whirlpool Corp., 716 F.2d 1010 (4th Cir. 1983)). We have held the same in the ADEA context, and a panel of our Court applied that holding in the Title VII context. See Bonham v. Dresser Indus., Inc., 569 F.2d 187, 193 (3d Cir. 1977); Hammer v. Cardio Med. Prods., Inc., 131 F. App‘x 829, 831-32 (3d Cir. 2005). And we need not categorically conclude that failure to post notices is itself sufficient to equitably toll the limitations period. Plaintiffs here allege more: that defendants actively misled them by failing to post notices and telling them that they were not employees with rights but rather prisoners who could be forced to work for below the minimum wage. App. 126–27 ¶¶ 117–118. These allegations amount to “active misleading” such that equitable tolling applies. See Hedges v. United States, 404 F.3d 744, 751 (3d Cir. 2005).11
F. Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law
The Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law requires employers to pay employees their promised wages “in lawful money of the United States or check.”
The District Court first held that the law did not apply to plaintiffs based on its earlier conclusion that there was not an employer-employee relationship in the FLSA context. But it also held that even if there was, plaintiff failed to allege an implied contract or a breach thereof. The Court noted that while Burrell alleged he was told by prison staff that he would receive $5.00 a day for working at the Center, Huzzard and Stuckey did not allege that they were told as much, “only that they in fact received $5.00 a day and those payments were deposited in their commissary accounts.” App. 82. It then extrapolated from those facts the conclusion that “[t]he Second Amended Complaint contains no allegation that a person acting with the authority to speak for any Defendant established that Plaintiffs would be paid $5.00 for their services. Thus, the Court cannot infer from the Second Amended Complaint that the parties ‘agreed on the obligation to be incurred.‘” App. 83 (quoting Oxner v. Clivedon Nursing & Rehab. Ctr. PA, L.P., 132 F. Supp. 3d 645, 649 (E.D. Pa. 2015)) (cleaned up).
But the District Court‘s conclusion ignores its own acknowledgment that Burrell alleged that County prison staff—who presumably have the authority to speak for the County—told him that he would be paid $5.00 a day for his work at the Center. That directly contradicts the inference that plaintiffs fail to allege that anyone “acting with the authority to speak for any Defendant established that Plaintiffs would be paid $5.00 for their services.” App. 83. That is exactly what Burrell has alleged.
And it is no far stretch to identify an implied agreement. Plaintiffs allege that “[t]he Authority and the County set Debtors’ pay at $5 per day.” App. 130 ¶ 142. Further, as the Authority points out in its brief,
The problems with plaintiffs’ claims, however, are more fundamental. The crux of their claims is that “[p]ayment
G. Unjust Enrichment
The District Court dismissed plaintiffs’ unjust enrichment claim because it was pleaded as a companion to plaintiffs’ forced labor and involuntary servitude claims, and where the unjust enrichment claim rests on the same improper conduct as the underlying tort claim, the unjust enrichment claim will rise or fall with the underlying claim. As plaintiffs’ TVPA claims survive against the County, the Authority, and the Corporation, so do their unjust enrichment claims.
Further, plaintiffs contend that they “plausibly alleged the three elements of an unjust enrichment claim, independent from their TVPA and Thirteenth Amendment claims.” Pls.’ Br. at 53. Those three elements are (1) conferring a benefit on defendant; (2) defendant‘s knowledge of the benefit; and (3) circumstances are such that defendant‘s retention of that benefit would be unjust. See Allegheny Gen. Hosp. v. Philip Morris, Inc., 228 F.3d 429, 447 (3d Cir. 2000). They allege that they conferred the benefits of their labor by working at the Center and the resulting lower operating costs on all defendants. They allege all defendants knowingly obtained those benefits. And they allege that defendants’ retention of those benefits was not only unjust because it was the result of plaintiffs’ unlawfully forced labor, but because Defendants got those benefits “from an unfair competitive advantage by paying subminimum wages into commissary accounts they tightly control.” Pls.’ Br. at 54. That species of unjust enrichment is more akin to a contract claim than a tort claim, and rises and falls with their FLSA claims rather than their TVPA claims.
As plaintiffs plausibly allege that the County, its Municipal Authority, and the Corporation unjustly retained the yield of their labor, whether by way of a TVPA violation or a FLSA violation, plaintiffs’ unjust enrichment claims on both theories survive against those defendants.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm dismissal of plaintiffs’ Thirteenth Amendment and Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law claims in full, and of their TVPA and RICO claims against the DeNaples brothers. We will reverse dismissal of their TVPA, FLSA, Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act, and unjust enrichment claims against the County, the Authority, and the Corporation, and of their RICO claims against the Corporation and remand.
MATEY, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Choices usually come with consequences. We can honor our obligations, pursue opportunity, make good on our debts. Or we can walk the other way and decline to play by the rules. Ordinarily, law fences these two paths, rewarding industry and honesty, penalizing irresponsibility. The majority‘s
I.
This action began (and really ended) when Plaintiffs failed to pay child support. No party argues that the court orders
So how did this turn into a federal question? Neither Plaintiffs nor the majority are clear. “The law in [Pennsylvania] is . . . that the trial court must set the conditions for a purge in such a way as the contemnor has the present ability to comply with the order.” Hyle, 868 A.2d at 605. Meaning Plaintiffs could have paid their debt and purged their contempt. Or, if their circumstances shifted after the hearing, they could have asked for relief under
We do not face men wrongfully imprisoned. Or, as the United States awkwardly attempted to analogize, women abducted and forced into sex slavery. See Oral Arg. at 34:03–34:16 (Counsel for the United States) (“You can imagine victims of sex trafficking who aren‘t—they aren‘t—chained in the room. They‘re not locked in the basement. They could potentially leave.“). Plaintiffs were found in willful
Properly framed, Plaintiffs’ claims should be dismissed. Instead, the majority makes room for claims of human trafficking and unfair labor, reading new meanings into old laws to draw conclusions reached by no other federal circuit. That, I believe, is erroneous.
II.
Begin with the
First, there is no plausible allegation Plaintiffs worked at the recycling facility because of an abuse of law. Plaintiffs start generally, stating Defendants (all of them) “force Debtors to work at the Center before they can ‘qualify’ for work release. This means that for potentially hundreds of Debtors, forced labor has been the price of freedom from incarceration.”7 App. 113, ¶ 3. That “prevent[s] Debtors from earning wages through work release that would benefit Debtors and their children, who would receive those wages through child support payments.” App. 113, ¶ 4. Meaning Plaintiffs are held as captives, unable to pay their way to freedom by earning enough to pay their debts. Appalling, and a likely violation of the
Thankfully, it is not. Because, again, Plaintiffs have not been incarcerated as debtors and are not ordered to work to pay their creditors. They are civil contemnors found capable of paying child support amounts lawfully ordered. Lost in the discussion, but plain in the law and facts: Plaintiffs did not have to participate in the Commonwealth‘s discretionary work release program.8 That is because the work program is not designed to provide Plaintiffs with an opportunity to earn money to purge their contempt. Rather, the work program “fills gaps in local correctional systems and addresses local needs through expansion of punishment and services available to the court.”
Nor can the invocation of the “dangerous and disgusting conditions,” Maj. Op. at 5, and colorful descriptions of “sorting through trash,” Maj. Op. at 5, 12, carry the ominous implications Plaintiffs seek. All can agree that working at a recycling factory is dirty, difficult, and demanding. Respectfully, to both the majority and the millions of workers who serve neighborhoods in the Commonwealth and across the nation, that is the nature of physical labor. Not all sit at a keyboard. Many would not even if given the choice. The suggestion that because work is rigorous it must also be repugnant finds no support in law, logic, or human experience.
experience.11 And it cannot shoulder the weight the majority assigns, that knowledge of recycling facility conditions allows an inference of knowledge of an abuse of the law. Because thereTake Ricchio v. McLean, 853 F.3d at 555. The motel owners’ knowledge was evident from the “high-fives” with the abductor in the parking lot, and visits to the room where they “nonchalantly ignored Ricchio‘s plea for help in escaping” and witnessed Ricchio kicked and forced back to the rented room “when she had tried to escape.” Id. All creating a “plausible understanding” that the motel owners knew their lodge was being used for rape and assault. Id.
Or Bistline v. Parker, 918 F.3d at 875 (cleaned up). Still, defendants discussed their client‘s “illegal goals” and aided a “scheme to ‘cloak’ forced labor and ritual rape of young girls ‘with the superficial trappings of legal acceptance.‘” Id. (citations omitted).
Bistline and Ricchio illustrate the kind of extraordinary and unusual circumstances necessary to infer knowledge for TVPA claims. Motel managers cannot feign ignorance of sex trafficking when they see a woman locked in a room, battered and pleading to escape. Lawyers may not shrug off evidence of child abuse and rape and return to drafting trusts. The knowledge suggested in this case shatters that standard and turns the TVPA‘s goal of “effectuat[ing] the constitutional prohibitions against slavery and involuntary servitude” into an employment action. Muchira, 850 F.3d at 625. That is wrong, and as the District Court correctly concluded, Plaintiffs’ TVPA claims should be dismissed.12
III.
Arguing in the alternative, Plaintiffs allege that if they are not slaves or involuntary servants, they must be employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA“) and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act.13 Intricate questions about whether Defendants are employers, or joint employers, under the FLSA abound. But they need not be answered because Plaintiffs are contemnors, not employees, under the best reading of the FLSA.
Analyzing the FLSA requires that we “proceed[] methodically” through the statute‘s text. Badgerow v. Walters, 142 S. Ct. 1310, 1317 (2022). The goal, as always, is to give effect to the legislature‘s charge, Brown v. Barry, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 365, 367 (1797), as expressed in the text‘s “ordinary meaning . . . at the time Congress
A.
The FLSA states an “employee” is “any individual employed by an employer,”
Legal sources at the FLSA‘s enactment defined “employee” as “[o]ne who works for an employer,” generally including “a person working for salary or wages,” but “rarely to the higher officers of a corporation or government or to domestic servants.” Black‘s Law Dictionary 657 (3d ed. 1933). Those general concepts yield to specific applications, “and whether one is an employee or not will depend upon particular facts and circumstances.” Id.; see, e.g., Walling v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 317 U.S. 564, 571-72 (1943) (“The applicability of the Act is dependent on the character of the employees’ work.“). So our focus is not on “isolated factors but rather upon the circumstances
The “circumstances of the whole activity” here, the genesis of Plaintiffs’ work, is their custody. Without the contempt finding, they would not be committed to the Lackawanna County Prison. And Plaintiffs agree they are in custody and that their work is tied to their incarceration. App. 115-16, ¶¶ 24-29 (Burrell); App. 119-20, ¶¶ 60-63, 67 (Huzzard); App. 121-22, ¶¶ 83-88 (Stuckey). Custody is another legal term, meaning “the detainer of a man‘s person by virtue of lawful process or authority,” an “actual imprisonment.” Black‘s Law Dictionary 493-94 (3d ed. 1933).15 See also Kelley v. Oregon, 273 U.S. 589, 591 (1927) (describing the plaintiff as being “constantly in the custody of the warden of the penitentiary inside and outside of the courtroom, during the trial” and finding “[i]t is a new meaning attached to the requirement of due process of law that one who is serving in the penitentiary for a felony and while there commits a capital offense must, in order to secure a fair trial, be entirely freed from custody“); Sibray v. United States, 185 F. 401, 403-04 (3d Cir. 1911) (“The custody complained of must be actual and not constructive” and contrasting someone “in . . . custody or control” with one “out on bail.“); Smith v. Commonwealth, 59 Pa. 320, 324 (1869) (“Custody is the detainer of a person under lawful authority.“).
These “common linguistic intuitions” are “at least strained by the classification of prisoners as ‘employees.‘” Vanskike v. Peters, 974 F.2d 806, 807 (7th Cir. 1992). First, the prison does not act as Plaintiffs’ employer. It is, rather, the caretaker of Plaintiffs “by virtue of lawful process or authority.” See Black‘s Law Dictionary 493-94 (3d ed. 1933). As such, Plaintiffs are detainees in the prison‘s custody, not employees. Second, Plaintiffs are not persons working for salary or wages; they are able to voluntarily participate in the recycling center to help “accept, process and market recyclable commodities.” App. 149 (Operating Agreement between Center and Authority). That fits squarely into Pennsylvania law to “fill gaps in local correctional systems and address local needs through expansion of punishment and services available to the court.”
B.
Context confirms that reading, as all laws are “part of an entire corpus juris,” and we must interpret “laws dealing with the same subject” “harmoniously.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 252 (2012). See also Carlsbad Tech., Inc. v. HIF Bio, Inc., 556 U.S. 635, 638 (2009) (noting that the Court “has consistently held” two statutes “must be read in pari materia“); Lafferty v. St. Riel, 495 F.3d 72, 81-82 (3d Cir. 2007) (interpreting two statutes using “the common canon of statutory construction that similar statutes are to be construed similarly“). And we “presume that
That is a sensible reading. Unlike the Ashurst-Sumners Act, the FLSA “was enacted to improve the living conditions and general well-being of free-world American workers and their bargaining strength vis-a-vis employers.” Reimonenq v. Foti, 72 F.3d 472, 476 (5th Cir. 1996). If a prison puts its inmates “to work, it is to offset some of the cost of keeping them, or to keep them out of mischief, or to ease their transition to the world outside, or to equip them with skills and habits that will make them less likely to return to crime outside.” Bennett v. Frank, 395 F.3d 409, 410 (7th Cir. 2005). Such goals are incompatible “with federal regulation of their wages and hours. The reason the FLSA contains no express exception for prisoners is probably that the idea was too outlandish to occur to anyone when the legislation was under consideration by Congress.” Id.16
Finally, the majority distinguishes between intra-prison work and work done by prisoners outside of the prison not for the benefit of the prison. See Maj. Op. at 30-32; Tourscher v. McCullough, 184 F.3d 236, 243 (3d Cir. 1999) (“[P]risoners who perform intra-prison work are not entitled to minimum wages under the FLSA.“).17
Plaintiffs were not employees while working at the Center. No work can untether Plaintiffs from their status as individuals in custody for contempt. Thus, the motions to dismiss the FLSA claims were properly granted.18
IV.
Plaintiffs, really their counsel, have strong opinions. About holding delinquent dads in contempt when they stop following court orders and stop supporting their children. About sanitary work, and whether it serves a salutary purpose. How to manage a recycling plant. How much to pay prisoners. All topics fit for consideration by the Commonwealth‘s elected officials. Rather than pursue that option, or provide direct assistance to Plaintiffs to reduce what is repeatedly claimed to be an unjust court order, all take the plunge into protracted litigation. Offering, it seems, no help to Plaintiffs or future contemnors allegedly laboring endlessly in perpetual confinement. Moreover, such a ruling diverges from the traditional and classically ordered principles acknowledging the great duty parents hold to care for their children19 and the “great importance to
Respectfully, we should follow the sound reasoning of the District Court and dismiss these novel claims, leaving all free to work, to petition the government for change, or to decline to do anything. Such is the usual way of our Republic and, accordingly, I dissent in part.
Notes
As the Recycling Center acknowledges, parties “can plead facts in the alternative, and under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8, a party may state as many separate claims or defenses as it has, regardless of consistency.” Corp. Br. at 28 n.13. And it is true that plaintiffs cannot assert contradictory factual allegations that are not legitimately in doubt. See id. But whether plaintiffs’ work was involuntary is not a fact; it is a mixed question of law and fact which is so in doubt that the District Court already denied it. The Court cannot then turn around and say plaintiffs did not allege the very thing the Court concluded had to be true—that plaintiffs’ work was voluntary.
Of course, plaintiffs cannot prevail on the merits on both their TVPA claims, which require some degree of involuntary work, and their FLSA claims, which require that they worked voluntarily. But that does not bar plaintiffs from presenting both theories to a factfinder who can conclude whether the facts prove that plaintiffs’ work was voluntary or involuntary.
On January 5, 2023, Congress enacted the