Ramirez v. Statewide Harvesting & Hauling, LLC, 20-11995

• Decision Date: 21 May 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-11995,20-11995
• Citation: 997 F.3d 1356
• Parties: Jose RAMIREZ, Joel Santana, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. STATEWIDE HARVESTING & HAULING, LLC, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

997 F.3d 1356

Jose RAMIREZ, Joel Santana, Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.STATEWIDE HARVESTING & HAULING, LLC, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 20-11995

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 21, 2021

R. Edward Rosenberg, Sorondo Rosenberg Legal, PA, Coral Gables, FL, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

David John Stefany, Matthew David Stefany, Allen Norton & Blue, PA, Tampa, FL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, LUCK, Circuit Judge, and MARKS,^* District Judge.

WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge:

This appeal involves the agriculture exemption from the overtime-compensation requirements in the Fair Labor Standards Act. 29 U.S.C. § 213(b)(12). A fruit-harvesting company required its crew leaders to transport field workers between company-provided housing and a grocery store, laundromat, and bank every week. Two crew leaders sued the company for failure to pay them overtime compensation for the trips. Because we agree with the district court that these activities do not fall within the agriculture exemption, we affirm the judgment in favor of the crew leaders.

I. BACKGROUND

Statewide Harvesting & Hauling, LLC, harvests fruit from about 1,500 fields for multiple farmers in Florida and hauls that fruit to various packinghouses or processing plants. It does not own any of the land it harvests. For the harvest seasons between 2014 and 2017, Statewide employed mostly temporary foreign guest workers as its seasonal harvest workers, through the federal H-2A program. See 20 C.F.R. §§ 655.100 et seq.

The H-2A program requires a labor contractor to provide workers with housing. Id. § 655.122(d)(1). It also requires a labor contractor to provide harvest workers with either three meals a day or "free and convenient cooking and kitchen facilities." Id. § 655.122(g). And the contractor must provide access to other basic housing amenities including laundry facilities. Id. § 655.122(d)(1)(i).

Statewide housed its harvest workers in three cities. The traveling distance from the accommodations to the fields varied: some fields were across the street from the accommodations, and others were up to two hours away. It chose to provide its harvest workers with cooking facilities instead of meals and with transportation from the accommodations to a grocery store, laundromat, and bank. Statewide also contractually agreed to provide the grocery store and bank transportation to the harvest workers.

Statewide employed Jose Ramirez and Joel Santana as crew leaders responsible for supervising the field workers during the harvest seasons. Ramirez and Santana also drove the workers to and from the accommodations and the grocery store, laundromat, and bank. These weekly trips lasted approximately four hours. Between 2014 and 2017, Ramirez and Santana worked anywhere from three-and-a-half to over 80 hours a week. Neither crew leader received any overtime compensation when he worked over 40 hours a week.

In 2017, Ramirez and Santana sued Statewide under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et seq. , for unpaid overtime compensation for the basic-necessities driving trips. They alleged that Statewide willfully refused to pay them overtime wages as required under the Act and sought damages. Statewide did not deny that Ramirez and Santana were covered by the Act, but it maintained that all of their employment activities fell under the exemption from the overtime requirements for agricultural work. Id. § 213(b)(12).

Both sides moved for summary judgment. The district court referred the motions to a magistrate judge, who concluded that Statewide was not a farmer, the driving trips were not actually performed on a farm, and the trips were not a minor part of their work—all reasons why the exemption would not apply. But the magistrate judge decided that the agriculture exemption includes "work activities performed neither by a farmer nor on a farm when those work activities are incidental to primary agricultural activities performed on a farm." Because Statewide provided the transportation to comply with H-2A requirements for its harvest workers, the magistrate judge recommended concluding that the transportation fell under the exemption.

The district court rejected the magistrate judge's recommendation. It explained that the activities must be performed by a farmer or on a farm to fall under the exemption. Because Statewide did not object to the magistrate judge's conclusion that it is not a farmer or that the work was minor, and the activities at issue occurred wholly off a farm, the exemption did not apply. It denied Statewide's motion and it granted in part Ramirez and Santana's motion; it denied summary judgment for Ramirez and Santana on the issue of willfulness. The parties resolved the remaining issues by stipulating that Statewide's conduct was not willful and agreeing to the amount of damages.

II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW

We review summary judgment de novo . Buckner v. Fla. Habilitation Network, Inc. , 489 F.3d 1151, 1154 (11th Cir. 2007). "Whether an employee meets the criteria for" an exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act, "although based on the underlying facts, is ultimately a legal question." Pioch v. IBEX Eng'g Servs., Inc. , 825 F.3d 1264, 1268 (11th Cir. 2016). And we review legal questions de novo . Buckner , 489 F.3d at 1154.

III. DISCUSSION

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay overtime to covered employees for all hours worked in excess of forty hours a week, 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1), but it exempts from this requirement "any employee employed in agriculture," id. § 213(b)(12). The Act includes primary and secondary definitions of "agriculture." Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb , 337 U.S. 755, 762–63, 69 S.Ct. 1274, 93 L.Ed. 1672 (1949). The primary definition is "farming in all its branches ... includ[ing] the cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural commodities ..., [and] the raising of livestock, bees, fur-bearing animals, or poultry[.]" 29 U.S.C. § 203(f). And the secondary definition is "any practices (including any forestry or lumbering operations) performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with [primary] farming operations, including preparation for market[ and] delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market." Id.

The employer bears the burden of establishing that an employee is exempt. Pioch , 825 F.3d at 1268. The Supreme Court previously held that the Act's exemptions "must ... be narrowly construed" because of its "humanitarian and remedial" purpose. A.H. Phillips, Inc. v. Walling , 324 U.S. 490, 493, 65 S.Ct. 807, 89 L.Ed. 1095 (1945). But it recently corrected course and held that the exemptions from the Act should be interpreted fairly, not narrowly. Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1134, 1142, 200 L.Ed.2d 433 (2018) ; see also Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts § 63, at 363 (2012) ("Without some textual indication, there is no reason to give statutory exceptions anything other than a fair (rather than a ‘narrow’) interpretation."). So we too must give the agriculture exemption its fair meaning. See Scalia & Garner, Reading Law , at 33 (describing "fair reading" as "how a reasonable reader, fully competent in the language, would have understood the text at the time it was issued.").

For Statewide to bear its burden, it must establish that the basic-necessities trips fall under the "on a farm" clause of the secondary "agriculture" definition. The primary definition plainly does not include transportation of workers, which is not "farming." And the text of the secondary definition is clear: non-primary activities must be "performed by a farmer or on a farm" to be considered "agriculture." 29 U.S.C. § 203(f) ; see also 29 C.F.R. § 780.129 ; Farmers Reservoir , 337 U.S. at 766, 69 S.Ct. 1274 ; Ares v. Manuel Diaz Farms, Inc. , 318 F.3d 1054, 1056 (11th Cir. 2003). Statewide does not challenge the conclusion that it is not a farmer because it "did not own, lease, or control the farms or crops harvested." See 29 C.F.R. § 780.131 ("As a general rule, a farmer performs his farming operations on land owned, leased, or controlled by him and devoted to his own use."). Nor does it challenge the conclusion that the driving trips were not a minor part of Ramirez's and Santana's work. See id. § 780.136 (explaining that an employee who works "on a farm" is exempted even if "a minor and incidental part of the work of such an employee occurs off the farm"). So to be exempt from the overtime requirements, the driving trips must have been "performed ... on a farm."

Activities that are "performed ... on a farm" are activities performed within the geographical area that constitutes a farm. See id. § 780.135 (defining "farm" as "a tract of land devoted to the actual farming activities included in" the primary definition of "agriculture" and explaining that the "total area of a tract operated as a unit for farming purposes is included in the ‘farm’ "). For example, "building terraces or threshing wheat and other grain," "erect[ing] ... silos and granaries," and "digging wells or building dams for farm ponds" are activities "performed ‘on a farm.’ " Id. § 780.136. By contrast, activities "performed away from the farms being serviced," such as the repairing of equipment off a farm, are excluded. Hodgson v. Ewing , 451 F.2d 526, 527, 529 (5th Cir. 1971) ; see also Boyls v. Wirtz , 352 F.2d 63, 63 (5th Cir. 1965). In Farmers Reservoir , for example, the Supreme Court concluded that "the physical operation, control and maintenance" of "canals, reservoirs, and headgates" for a company that stored water and distributed it to farms through the company's canals were activities "[c]learly ... not done on a farm." 337 U.S. at 757, 767, 69 S.Ct. 1274.

Ordinarily, "[a]ny practice which cannot be...