A Battle for Standing

Our attorneys just filed an appeal in our lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor over its independent contractor rule. Here's why.

Pacific Legal Foundation is representing four of us freelance writers and editors in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor over its independent contractor rule. All four of us plaintiffs are co-founders of Fight For Freelancers.

On October 7, the District Court judge dismissed our case, saying we lacked standing to file the lawsuit. On October 23, our pro bono attorneys filed an appeal in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

I asked our attorney, Wilson Freeman, to explain what standing is and why it’s so hard for independent contractors to get it in a lawsuit that’s about an independent contractor rule.

Here’s our conversation.

Would you please explain what standing is?

Standing is a jurisdictional requirement in the federal courts. To be in the federal courts, you need to have what the courts call an “injury in fact,” and the remedy you are seeking must remedy that injury in some concrete way.

This prevents people from filing lawsuits who have nothing at stake. Here, the court determined that we lacked that injury, that the future harm we said the rule would inflict on your business was speculative.

Just to be clear, the court did not rule on our arguments about the U.S. Department of Labor independent contractor rule itself. The court instead said we do not have the standing to even make our arguments about that rule.

Is that correct?

Yes. The court did not reach the merits.

Why is it so hard for independent contractors to get standing in cases that challenge government rule-making about independent contractors?

According to the court, this would be because independent contractors are not at risk of being the target of an enforcement action.

Injuries that they suffer are necessarily “indirect.” That is, they result from enforcement actions and threats of enforcement actions against their clients.

Pacific Legal has filed an appeal in this case, hoping that a higher court will grant us standing.

In the meantime, does this ruling affect any of the other federal lawsuits that are pending in other jurisdictions against the U.S. Department of Labor rule?

No. There are several other pending cases.

What else is it important for independent contractors to know in the wake of this ruling?

The rule remains in place. We continue the fight.