NELP, and Partners, File Amicus Brief Defending Minimum Wage and Overtime Protections for Homecare Workers

On January 21, 2025, NELP and amici PHI, Economic Policy Institute (EPI), National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) filed an amicus brief supporting the Department of Labor’s (DOL) 2015 regulation extending minimum wage and overtime protections to homecare workers. The DOL rule was challenged by a Pennsylvania home care agency, WiCare, after the DOL prosecuted the company’s failure to pay 88 of its employees the minimum wage and 181 of its employees overtime, as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In the brief, amici document the vast expansion and structural transformation of the home care industry and workforce from largely informal to regulated, commercial, and complex. Second, amici discuss severe job turnover and labor shortages in the contemporary home care industry, which adversely impacts the availability, quality, and continuity of care. Finally, amici draw on research about industry finances and practices to show that extending federal minimum wage and overtime protections to more home care workers has improved the quality and continuity of care, without increasing costs to consumers or rendering home care businesses unprofitable.

Ensuring homecare workers, and all workers, are covered by federal minimum wage and overtime laws is key to building a good-jobs economy—an economy where every job is a good job, everyone who wants a job can get one, and everyone has economic security between jobs.