William Burrell, Jr. v. Tom Staff

PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
__________
No. 21-2846
__________
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
William L. Burrell, Jr.; Joshua Huzzard; Dampsey Stuckey;
*Anthony Cravath; *Anthony John Goodwin, Sr.;
*Derrick M. Lake; *Eugene R. Taylor; *Ralph Wasko;
*Timothy Alan Whited; *Torrance Allen; *Gabriel Martinez;
and *Gerard Nelson,
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
Argued July 14, 2022
BEFORE: GREENAWAY, JR., MATEY,
and NYGAARD, Circuit Judges
(Filed: February 8, 2023)
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
2
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
3
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
4
Catherine Ruckelshaus
National Employment Law Project
90 Broad Street, Suite 1100
New York, NY 10004
Counsel for Amicus Appellants Community Legal
Services of Philadelphia, Justice at Work
Pennsylvania, National Employment Law Project,
National Employment Lawyers Association,
Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project
__________
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
1
Plaintiffs do not appeal the dismissal of their claims against
defendant Tom Staff, an administrator employed by
Lackawanna County who regulated the Work Release Program
and the Community Service Program at the Lackawanna
5
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
County Prison. “All defendants” thus means the County, the
Authority, the Corporation, and the DeNaples brothers.
2
Plaintiffs do not appeal the dismissal of their RICO claims
against the County and the Authority.
3
Plaintiffs press their Fair Labor Standards Act claims on
behalf of a FLSA collective and the rest of their claims on
behalf of a Rule 23 class.
6
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 that “he had a
‘choice’—either work in the LRC or spend an extra six months
in prison—given the dearth of case law in this area, it is not
clear, especially at the screening stage, whether this ‘choice’
was sufficient to bring the alleged practice of coercing civil
contemnors to work in the LRC out of the range of involuntary
servitude.” Id. at 159–60 (cleaned up). The panel also said in a
footnote that
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, 131
7
S.Ct. 2507, 180 L.Ed.2d 452 (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
Amendment 4 and the TVPA, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589, 1595; 5 that
4
Plaintiffs press their Thirteenth Amendment claims via 42
U.S.C. § 1983.
5
§ 1595 creates a civil cause of action for victims of, inter alia,
a TVPA violation, “against the perpetrator []or whoever
knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of
value from participation in a venture which that person knew
or should have known has engaged in an act in violation of this
chapter[.]” Id. § 1595(a). On January 5, 2023, Congress
enacted the Abolish Trafficking Reauthorization Act of 2022.
This amended the language in § 1595(a) to include a TVPA
8
defendants’ violations of the TVPA as an association in fact
was a pattern of racketeering activity under RICO, 18 U.S.C.
§ 1961(1), in violation of id. §§ 1962(c), 1964(c); that failure
to pay them the minimum wage for their work at the Recycling
Center violated FLSA’s minimum wage provision, 29 U.S.C.
§ 206(a)(1)(c), and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act, 43
Pa. Stat. and Cons. Stat. § 333.104(a.1); that paying plaintiffs’
daily five dollar wage into their commissary accounts, rather
than in cash or check, violated the Pennsylvania Wage
Payment and Collection Law, id. § 260.2a; and that plaintiffs’
work at the Center unjustly enriched defendants.
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 to pay their purges and leave
prison rather than work at the Recycling Center. The Court also
dismissed plaintiffs’ RICO and unjust enrichment claims
because they were predicated on plaintiffs’ failed Thirteenth
violation, “against the perpetrator []or whoever knowingly
benefits, or attempts or conspires to benefit, financially . . ..”
See Pub. L. No. 117-347, 136 Stat 6199, 6200 (emphasis
added).
9
Amendment and TVPA claims. The Court finally dismissed
plaintiffs’ FLSA, Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act, and
Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law claims
because plaintiffs failed to allege an employer-employee
relationship, an implied contract on wages to be paid, or a
breach thereof.
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
10
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
11
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 Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(c). Plaintiffs correctly point out that issue
preclusion “has not yet been raised in this case.” Pls.’ Reply
Br. at 4–5 n.1. But they “do not challenge the state-court
ability-to-pay finding,” id., the only state court determination
relevant to plaintiffs’ claims. Instead, plaintiffs contend that
they “allege injuries caused by events occurring after the state-
court orders—their ever‐worsening financial circumstances
and Defendants’ exploitation of them,” and that their “financial
insecurity increased once detained.” Pls.’ Br. at 16–17. The
state court purge orders’ ability-to-pay findings were limited
by law to plaintiffs’ respective present abilities to pay at the
time the orders were entered. See Hyle v. Hyle, 868 A.2d 601,
605 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2005) (“[T]he 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.”) (emphasis in
original). They did not, and could not, make any predictions
about plaintiffs’ ability to pay in the future.
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.
12
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
13
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, 23 Pa. C.S. §
4352(a.2), expressly excludes “incarceration for nonpayment
of support” from “constitut[ing] a material and substantial
change in circumstance that may warrant modification or
termination of an order of support where the obligor lacks
verifiable income or assets sufficient to enforce and collect
amounts due.” As plaintiffs were legally unable to have their
support orders modified or terminated for changed
circumstances stemming from incarceration for nonpayment of
support, they need not plead otherwise.
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,
14
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 18 U.S.C. § 1584 and the
Thirteenth Amendment, is “limited to cases involving the
compulsion of services by the use or threatened use of physical
or legal coercion.” 487 U.S. at 948. The Court rejected the
Government’s broader proposed understanding of the phrase,
which encompassed “the compulsion of services by any means
that, from the victim's point of view, either leaves the victim
with no tolerable alternative but to serve the defendant or
deprives the victim of the power of choice,” because that
reading “would delegate to prosecutors and juries the
inherently legislative task of determining what type of coercive
activities are so morally reprehensible that they should be
punished as crimes.” Id. at 949.
“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
15
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 derive the principle that using an otherwise legal
process for a purpose for which it was not created or intended
to be used is not, on its own, sufficient to constitute the threat
of legal sanction necessary to find a Thirteenth Amendment
violation. Here, restricting access to the work release program
and threatening plaintiffs with serving the entirety of their
otherwise legal contempt sentences is akin to the threats of
deportation in Zavala. Because plaintiffs do not sufficiently
allege involuntary servitude, they fail to state a Thirteenth
Amendment § 1983 claim on which relief can be granted, and
we will affirm the District Court’s dismissal of those claims.
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 15 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(1).
6
Although Zavala involved a claim under 18 U.S.C. § 1584,
the phrase “involuntary servitude” has the same meaning in §
1584 and the Thirteenth Amendment. See Kozminski, 487 U.S.
at 944–45.
16
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 15 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 15 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;
17
(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[.]
18 U.S.C § 1589(a). Specifically, subsections (2) and (4) draw
more broadly than Kozminski’s limitation to “physical or legal
coercion.” See also 22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(13) (noting, in support
of the TVPA’s passage, Kozminski’s narrow definition of
involuntary servitude and stating that “[i]nvoluntary servitude
statutes are intended to reach cases in which persons are held
in a condition of servitude through nonviolent coercion.”);
H.R. Rep. No. 106-939, at 101 (2000) (“Section 1589 will
provide federal prosecutors with the tools to combat severe
forms of worker exploitation that do not rise to the level of
involuntary servitude as defined in Kozminski.”).
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.
18
18 U.S.C. § 1589(c)(1).
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 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a). And the TVPA bars
getting or giving labor “by any one of, or by any combination
of, the [prohibited] means,” indicating that a victim can face
more than a binary choice and remain protected by the statute.
Id. The TVPA’s more-expansive definitions of coercion reflect
the “increasingly subtle” ways by which labor may be forced,
United States v. Dann, 652 F.3d 1160, 1169 (9th Cir. 2011),
including both physical and “nonphysical forms of coercion,”
Muchira v. Al-Rawaf, 850 F.3d 605, 617 (4th Cir. 2017).
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. Id. at 1589(c)(1).
Plaintiffs argue that
Pennsylvania law authorizes state correctional
facilities to implement and operate work‐release
19
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:
20
(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.
42 Pa. Stat. and Cons. Stat. § 9803.
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
21
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. 18 U.S.C.
§ 1589(c)(1); see id. § 1589(a)(3) (proscribing the obtaining or
providing of labor or services by means of the abuse of law or
legal process); see also United States v. Calimlim, 538 F.3d
706, 713 (7th Cir. 2008) (“[T]he immigration laws do not aim
to help employers retain secret employees by threats of
deportation, and so their ‘warnings’ about the consequences
were directed to an end different from those envisioned by the
law and were thus an abuse of the legal process. See
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 682. The warnings therefore
fit within the scope of § 1589(3).”). Of course, plaintiffs do not
have an independent due process or state-created liberty
interest in access to a work release program in which they have
not yet been placed. See Powell v. Weiss, 757 F.3d 338, 342–
46 (3d Cir. 2014). But they have a statutory right to be free
from having their labor knowingly coerced via, inter alia, the
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
22
means. 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a). That includes (1) serious harm,
such as “withholding basic necessities like food” if they did not
work efficiently enough at the Recycling Center, see
Barrientos v. CoreCivic, Inc., 951 F.3d 1269, 1273 (11th Cir.
2020); (2) physical restraint, like plaintiffs allege they faced
(albeit pursuant to a legal order) if they were unable to access
the work release program to pay their purge; and (3) abuse of
law or legal process, like conditioning access to a work release
program on the furnishing of a period of nearly free labor.
Plaintiffs have thus sufficiently pleaded that their labor was
provided and obtained by a combination of means prohibited
by the TVPA, 18 U.S.C. § 1589.
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.
23
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. 18 U.S.C.
§ 1589; see Gonzalez v. CoreCivic, Inc., 986 F.3d 536, 539 (5th
Cir. 2021) (cleaned up) (holding that § 1589(a) applies to a
federally regulated work program in a privately operated
federal immigration detention facility because “legislative
history cannot muddy the meaning of clear statutory
language”); Barrientos, 951 F.3d at 1276–77 (same). Just
because the County and its Municipal Authority purport to
operate community service and work release programs in
compliance with Pennsylvania law does not mean that they are
precluded from liability for those programs’ TVPA violations.
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.” 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a), (b).
Plaintiffs argue that at minimum, they have plausibly alleged a
beneficiary/venture claim as to the Authority, the Corporation,
and the DeNaples brothers.
24
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 allege
that the Authority and the Corporation, as parties to the
contract, knowingly benefited from its provisions, including
the providing of debtors’ labor to the Corporation. See App.
134 ¶¶ 183–84 (allegations about reduced operating costs
benefitting venture defendants).
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
25
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
7
The dissent’s description of Plaintiffs’ working conditions as
“colorful descriptions of ‘sorting through trash’” and “dirty,
difficult, and demanding” work fails to accurately reflect what
Plaintiffs’ allege has occurred. One can celebrate and
recognize the importance of blue-collar jobs and also point out
working conditions that most workers would find repugnant
and would serve as the basis for a TVPA claim—i.e., getting
paid less than six dollars per day, having your meals taken
away if you do not work hard enough, lacking protective
equipment or failing to have basic sanitary items like a
functioning toilet.
26
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.
The claims as to the DeNaples brothers are more
tenuous. Plaintiffs state plausible facts alleging that the
DeNaples brothers benefitted from and participated in the
venture and generally allege that “Defendants were aware of
Debtors’ work at the Center,” App. 134 ¶ 181, but they do not
state any facts supporting that general conclusion, nor from
which the conclusion could be reasonably inferred. See
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 686–87 (2009) (“Rule 8 does
not empower respondent to plead the bare elements of his cause
27
of action, affix the label ‘general allegation,’ and expect his
complaint to survive a motion to dismiss.”). 8
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, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c), states that
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
8
As stated in footnote five, Congress amended the TVPA on
January 5, 2023. See Pub. L. No. 117-347, 136 Stat 6199, 6200.
The 2023 TVPA amendment adds civil liability for anyone
who “attempts or conspires to benefit” from a TVPA violation.
Even if this applies retroactively, it neither alters the
requirement that the defendant “knew or should have known”
that the venture violated the TVPA nor our conclusion that
pleadings as to the DeNaples brothers fail for this reason.
28
§ 1964(c) provides a civil remedy for “[a]ny person injured in
his business or property by reason of a violation of section
1962.”
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 for, and allegedly overseeing,
plaintiffs’ labor, in order to operate the Recycling Center for
its and the County/Authority’s profit, indicates that the
Corporation “participated in the ‘operation or management’”
of the RICO enterprise—here, the same as the TVPA venture
29
described above—“ through a pattern of racketeering activity.”
See In re Ins. Brokerage Antitrust Litig., 618 F.3d 300, 372 (3d
Cir. 2010).
E. FLSA & Pennsylvania Minimum Wage
Act
Plaintiffs contend that the Recycling Center, the
County, and the Authority violated the FLSA’s minimum wage
protections, 29 U.S.C. § 206(a)(1)(C), and the Pennsylvania
Minimum Wage Act, 43 Pa. Stat. and Cons. Stat. §
333.104(a.1), 9 by paying plaintiffs sixty-three cents an hour to
work at the Recycling Center.
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
9
This analysis also applies to plaintiffs’ Pennsylvania
Minimum Wage Act claims. See Commonwealth v. Stuber, 822
A.2d 870, 873 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2003).
30
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 claims 10—and (2) because plaintiffs alleged that
10
In order to conclude that plaintiffs had not sufficiently
alleged that their work was voluntary, the District Court
handwaved its earlier discrediting of plaintiffs’ claims of
compulsion and concluded that they had voluntarily chosen to
work. But if the Court found implausible plaintiffs’ allegations
that their work was involuntary, then it had decided their work
was voluntary, and could not dismiss their FLSA claims for
failure to sufficiently allege voluntariness.
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
31
the Authority and the County, the latter of which was their
jailer, set their pay. We will reverse, because plaintiffs have
alleged sufficient plausible facts to state a claim that they are
employees and that the County, its Municipal Authority, and
the Corporation are their joint employers.
1. Joint Employment
The FLSA’s minimum wage provisions apply to those
that fall under the statutory definition of “employees” and
“employers.” 29 U.S.C. § 206. The FLSA defines “employee”
as “any individual employed by an employer,” “employ” as “to
suffer or permit to work,” and “employer” as any “person,”
which encompasses an “individual, partnership, association,
corporation, business trust, legal representative, or any
organized group of persons” acting “directly or indirectly in
the interest of an employer in relation to an employee and
includes a public agency.” 29 U.S.C. § 203(a), (d), (e)(1), (g).
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.
32
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).
33
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 potentially relevant facts,
and should not be blindly applied.” Id. (emphasis in original)
(cleaned up). We continued that “courts should not be confined
to narrow legalistic definitions and must instead consider all
the relevant evidence, including evidence that does not fall
neatly within one of the above factors.” Id. (cleaned up). And
we noted that
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, we held that both pre-trial
and convicted inmates are “not entitled to minimum wages
34
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 at243–44. 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,
35
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
employees, (2) supervised and controlled employee work
schedules or conditions of employment, (3) determined the rate
and method of payment, and (4) maintained employment
records.” 704 F.2d 1465, 1470.
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,
36
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
37
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 at play when a custodial
jurisdiction receives an economic benefit for its not convicted
wards’ work.
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.
38
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.
39
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
40
[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 Recycling
Center relied on plaintiffs and other inmates to do work that
other recycling facilities had to hire people to do.
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).
Vanskike, 974 F.2d at 810.
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.
41
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 Ashurst-
Sumners Act of 1935, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 1761–62, is reason to
preclude from FLSA protection prisoners who partake in labor
outside prison walls and who perform labor that does not
benefit the prison. While the Ashurst-Sumners Act “regulates
the interstate transportation of prison-made goods to avoid
competition between low-cost prison labor and free labor,”
Danneskjold, 82 F.3d at 42, “prison labor might implicate
unfair-competition concerns when prisoners are paid below
minimum wage to work for ‘a company that was not providing
services to the prison and that competed with companies
42
required to pay wages set by the FLSA.’” Gamble v. Minnesota
State-Operated Servs., 32 F.4th 666, 671 (8th Cir. 2022)
(quoting Danneskjold, 82 F.3d at 44). That is arguably the
situation at hand. As stated above, the Corporation competed
with other recycling facilities that had to hire employees and
did not get the benefit of nearly free labor. Plaintiffs’ work was
done off-site and for the benefit of a public-private partnership,
unlike in Harker where the prisoners worked at a workshop
located in the prison and produced goods that reached the open
market in limited ways. See Harker v. State Indus., 990 F.2d
131, 136 (4th Cir. 1993). Plaintiffs’ work was also not that of
an inmate performing work assignments, such as janitor or
kitchen worker, directly for the benefit of the prison. See
Vanskike, 974 F.2d at 812. Here, the benefits of Plaintiffs’
labor do not redound to the prison. The existence of the
Ashurst-Sumners Act does not cause us to ignore the stark
differences between work done for the prison’s benefit and
outside work done at least partially to benefit a private
corporation.
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.
43
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
44
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
Accordingly, plaintiffs’ FLSA claims against the
County, the Authority, and the Corporation are not barred by
the statute of limitations.
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.” 43 Pa. Stat.
§ 260.3(a). That requirement is not waivable. Id. § 260.7. The
law “does not create a right to compensation. Rather, it
provides a statutory remedy when the employer breaches a
contractual obligation to pay earned wages. The contract
11
Additionally, Burrell’s FLSA claim relates back to the filing
of his First Amended Complaint. His FLSA claim in the
Second Amended Complaint “arose out of the conduct,
transaction, or occurrence set out—or attempted to be set out—
in the original pleading.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B). Burrell’s
pro se First Amended Complaint alleges that he was paid far
below the minimum wage to work full days at the Center, and
that he was told he could be treated as such because he was a
prisoner. With regard to his FLSA claim in the SAC, that
satisfies Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B).
45
between the parties governs in determining whether specific
wages are earned.” Weldon v. Kraft, Inc., 896 F.2d 793, 801
(3d Cir. 1990).
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.
46
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, 37 Pa. Code § 95.235(3) states
that “[w]ritten local policy must require that inmates who
participate in a work program (other than personal
housekeeping and housing area cleaning) receive
compensation. Written local policy must specify the type and
amount of compensation.” As plaintiffs allege that the County
determined what plaintiffs would be paid for their services, and
by law the County must specify that amount in a written policy,
plaintiffs allege sufficient facts from which it can be
reasonably implied that the County’s written policy informed
plaintiffs that they would be paid $5.00 a day for their work at
the Center, which they then gave in exchange for that money.
The problems with plaintiffs’ claims, however, are more
fundamental. The crux of their claims is that “[p]ayment into
the commissary accounts is not equivalent to payment by
lawful money of the United States or check. Commissary
accounts, among other things, earn no interest, are tightly
controlled by the Prison, and are subject to various mandatory
deductions by the Prison.” App. 131–32 ¶ 160. But cash and
checks, on their own, earn no interest either. Cash and checks
are also presumably contraband within the prison, which
justifies depositing plaintiffs’ pay into their commissary
accounts, just as cash and checks would be deposited. And
plaintiffs do not allege specific deductions that they contend
made payment into their commissary accounts different than
“lawful money.” Plaintiffs thus fail to state Pennsylvania Wage
Payment and Collection Law claims.
47
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, 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
48
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.
49
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 decision moves that line. While I agree Plaintiffs
fail to state claims under the original meaning of the Thirteenth
Amendment 1 and the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and
1
After an abhorrent chapter in our Nation’s history, the
Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the natural rights of all
persons through “a practical application of that self-evident
truth, ‘that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’” Jacobus
tenBroek, Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States: Consummation to Abolition and Key to the
Fourteenth Amendment, 39 Calif. L. Rev. 171, 178 (1951)
(quoting Cong. Globe, 38th Cong., 2d Sess. 142 (1865)
(statement of Rep. Godlove S. Orth)). The Amendment
reiterated the natural law that supports our Constitution,
making slavery irreconcilable “with the fundamental principles
upon which our government rests.” Joel Tiffany, A Treatise on
the Unconstitutionality of American Slavery (1849), reprinted
in 2 The Reconstruction Amendments: The Essential
Documents 237, 237–38 (Kurt T. Lash ed., 2021) (“All men
are possessed of the same natural rights, secured by the same
natural guarantys—held by the same tenure—their title is
derived from the same source. . . . Deny these truths, and you
destroy the foundation upon which society is based. Violate
them, and you are at war with yourself, with Man and God.”).
The Amendment, rooted in “our ancient faith [that] the just
powers of governments are derived from the consent of the
governed,” recognized that slavery’s existence was “a total
violation of this principle . . . [of] self government.” Abraham
Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (Oct. 16, 1854), reprinted in
2 The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln 247, 265–66 (Roy
Basler ed., 1953). “By the law of nature all men are born free
and equal, and man has no jus dominii in man. . . . [F]or
freedom is the natural right of every man, and slavery is
abridgment by positive law.” Slavery and the Incoming
Administration, in 2 Brownson’s Quarterly Review 65, 109
(1857). See also Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.)
393, 624 (1857) (Curtis, J., dissenting) (“Slavery, being
contrary to natural right, is created only by municipal law.”).
The Thirteenth Amendment codified the truth that slavery
could be treated as constitutional “only by disregarding the
plain and common-sense reading of the Constitution itself.”
Frederick Douglass, The Constitution of the United States: Is
It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860), reprinted in 2 The
Reconstruction Amendments: The Essential Documents 303,
308. See also Peter C. Myers, Seed-Time and Harvest-Time:
Natural Law and Rational Hopefulness in Frederick
Douglass’s Life and Times, 99 J. Afr. Am. Hist. 56 (2014),
reprinted in A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass 285,
287 (Neil Roberts ed., 2018) (“Douglass frequently invoked
the law of nature both because he was convinced of its
profound truth and also by virtue of its utility in various
practical applications.”).
None of Plaintiffs’ claims approach a violation of the
natural principles guarded in the Reconstruction Amendments,
nor could the nature of their work approach the atrocities the
2
Collection Law, the majority rescues Plaintiffs from their own
choices by allowing a host of statutory and common law
claims. Respectfully, the District Court’s decision dismissing
the entire action got it right. Despite having the means,
Plaintiffs did not pay child support. Despite Pennsylvania law
giving them recourse to modify that order, they filed no
petitions. Despite having the option not to, Plaintiffs asked to
work during their confinement for contempt. None of these
choices is disputed, none of the facts challenged. Still, claims
of forced servitude, human trafficking, and unfair labor can
now proceed. But regrets do not demand remedies in federal
court, and the fact Plaintiffs’ choices produced unappealing
consequences does not require new definitions of torture and
labor. So I dissent in part from the majority’s decision.
I.
This action began (and really ended) when Plaintiffs
failed to pay child support. No party argues that the court
orders directing Plaintiffs to provide for their children were
unlawful. None dispute that Plaintiffs failed to make those
payments to their families. And there is no disagreement what
happened next: After long periods without paying, each was
cited for civil contempt. Hearings followed and a judge found,
beyond a reasonable doubt, 2 that each Plaintiff had the present
Thirteenth Amendment protects against. Calling what amounts
to a wage and hour dispute a violation of these laws would be
a most remarkable departure from the Amendment’s original
meaning and disrespectful to that historic achievement.
2
See Hyle v. Hyle, 868 A.2d 601, 604–05 (Pa. Super.
Ct. 2005) (“To be found in civil contempt, a party must have
violated a court order” and “the court, in imposing coercive
imprisonment for civil contempt, should set conditions for
3
ability to pay the amounts owed to their children. 3 Pay that
amount, the court ordered, or serve a fixed term in prison for
contempt. That order and those findings have never been
challenged. Not at the contempt hearing. Not on appeal. Not in
a petition to modify the payments, a petition that “may be filed
at any time and shall be granted if the requesting party
demonstrates a substantial change in circumstances.” 23 Pa.
C.S. § 4352(a) (my emphasis). In short, Plaintiffs skipped their
support payments and wound up in contempt of court.
Decisions have consequences.
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 23 Pa. C.S. § 4352(a).
Why did Plaintiffs ignore these options? The Complaint—their
second—offers no answers. Instead, there is a single statement
that one Plaintiff, “Mr. Burrell[,] did not have $2,129.34—in
fact, he had nothing close to that.” App. 115, ¶ 28. And one
other line, nearly identically worded for each Plaintiff, noting
that, “lacking any other option, [Plaintiff] was compelled to
purging the contempt and effecting release from imprisonment
with which it is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, from
the totality of the evidence before it, the contemnor has the
present ability to comply.” (citations and quotations omitted)).
3
Child support payments follow guidelines based on the
means of the parent and the needs of the child. 23 Pa. C.S.
§ 4322(a).
4
work at the Center.” See App. 117, ¶ 36; App. 120, ¶ 67; App.
122, ¶ 88. Allegations that fall below the pleading standards
we regularly enforce in matters prepared by far less
sophisticated counsel. See, e.g., Fantone v. Latini, 780 F.3d
184, 193 (3d Cir. 2015) (noting that even with pro se
complaints, “we nonetheless review the pleading to ensure that
it has ‘sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a
claim to relief that is plausible on [its] face’” (quoting Ashcroft
v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009))). That, as the District Court
concisely concluded, means “the undisturbed Court of
Common Pleas orders conclusively established that Plaintiffs
were able to pay the purge at the time of their incarceration,
[and that] Plaintiffs’ conclusory assertions regarding ‘lacking
any option’ but to work at the Center and Plaintiff Burrell’s
statement that he ‘did not have $2,129.43’ are not entitled to a
presumption of truth.” App. 62 (citations omitted).
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 contempt
of an order to financially support their children. With ample
process, each received an opportunity to cure his contempt by
paying what he owed. And beyond a reasonable doubt,
5
Plaintiffs had the ability to pay4 and avoid prison altogether.5
If all of that is wrong, Commonwealth courts were, and still
are, available to reconsider.
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 Trafficking Victims Protection Act
(“TVPA”). The TVPA prohibits “knowingly provid[ing] or
4
“[M]odification may be applied to an earlier period if
the petitioner was precluded from filing a petition for
modification by reason of a significant physical or mental
disability, misrepresentation of another party or other
compelling reason and if the petitioner, when no longer
precluded, promptly filed a petition.” 23 Pa. C.S. § 4352(e).
True, the process expressly excludes “incarceration for
nonpayment of support.” 23 Pa. C.S. § 4352(a.2). But the purge
amount is set before surrender and calculated on the present
ability to pay. Meaning that right now, Plaintiffs can challenge
the purge amount that led to their contempt.
5
As with the District Court, we need not “determine that
the state court judgment was erroneously entered in order to
grant the requested relief.” In re Knapper, 407 F.3d 573, 581
(3d Cir. 2005) (citation omitted). “[I]f the circumstances in
existence at the time the state court entered the contempt orders
changed thereafter,” “Plaintiffs could have availed themselves
of the provisions of 23 Pa. C.S. § 4352” to modify the orders.
App. 52.
6
obtain[ing] the labor or services of a person” through a host of
unlawful means or “knowingly benefit[ting]” from joining a
venture involving forced labor. 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a), (b).
Claims under the TVPA usually “involve circumstances such
as squalid or otherwise intolerable living conditions,” “threats
of legal process such as arrest or deportation,” and
“exploitation of the victim’s lack of education and familiarity
with the English language, all of which are ‘used to prevent
[vulnerable] victims from leaving and to keep them bound to
their captors.’” Muchira v. Al-Rawaf, 850 F.3d 605, 618–19
(4th Cir. 2017) (quoting United States v. Callahan, 801 F.3d
606, 619 (6th Cir. 2015)) (alteration in original).6 Plaintiffs
6
Not surprisingly, reported TVPA decisions turn on
appalling criminal conduct and shocking depravity. See, e.g.,
Bistline v. Parker, 918 F.3d 849 (10th Cir. 2019) (members of
a congregation shielded a man who engaged in child rape,
forced labor, and extortion); Ricchio v. McLean, 853 F.3d 553,
555 (1st Cir. 2017) (Souter, J.) (prostitution scheme where
“McLean physically and sexually abused Ricchio, repeatedly
raping her, starving and drugging her, and leaving her visibly
haggard and bruised”); United States v. Callahan, 801 F.3d
606, 620 (6th Cir. 2015) (a developmentally disabled young
woman and her minor daughter deprived of food, locked in a
basement for hours on end, forced to beat each other on camera
while “Defendants threatened to show the video to the police
and Children’s Services if [the young woman] talked to any
strangers, went to her mom’s house, or otherwise ‘messed
up’”); United States v. Jungers, 702 F.3d 1066 (8th Cir. 2013)
(purchasers of commercial sex acts with children); United
States v. Dann, 652 F.3d 1160 (9th Cir. 2011) (immigrant
housekeeper who, among other things, was forbidden from
leaving the apartment without permission, denied her passport,
7
allege three theories, but the majority relies on only one: that
Plaintiffs’ labor was procured through the “abuse or threatened
abuse of law or legal process.” 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(3), (b). To
sustain a claim under the TVPA’s “abuse of law” clause,
Plaintiffs must plausibly allege the “use of a law or legal
process . . . 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.” 18 U.S.C. § 1589(c)(1). Plaintiffs point to the
direct acts of the County, and the indirect beneficiaries of those
acts: the Authority, Corporation, and DeNaples. Meaning
Plaintiffs must adequately allege first, that their work at the
recycling facility was obtained through an abuse of law and
legal process, and second, that Defendants knew, or recklessly
disregarded, the fact that their labor was obtained through
unlawful means. The Complaint lacks any allegation, no matter
how generously construed, that plausibly satisfies these
requirements
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
threatened with financial harm, and threatened that her children
would suffer harm if she were to leave the employment);
United States v. Todd, 627 F.3d 329 (9th Cir. 2010)
(prostitution ring of young girls who were beaten, threatened,
and, in at least one instance, forced to undergo an abortion).
Sorting recyclables is nothing of the sort.
8
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
Thirteenth Amendment, if true.
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
7
The Complaint refers to Plaintiffs collectively as
“Debtors” in a clumsy attempt, one supposes, to imply a
violation of Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983).
8
See 42 Pa. C.S. § 9812 (“Nothing in this chapter shall
be construed as creating an enforceable right in any person to
participate in an intermediate punishment program in lieu of
incarceration.”). See also Maldonado v. Karnes, No. 3:CV-14-
1330, 2014 WL 5035470, at *5 (M.D. Pa. Oct. 8, 2014) (“An
inmate does not have a protected liberty or property interest in
prison employment. The right to earn wages while incarcerated
is a privilege, not a constitutionally guaranteed right.” (citing
James v. Quinlan, 866 F.2d 627, 629–30 (3d Cir. 1989); Bryan
v. Werner, 516 F.2d 233, 240 (3d Cir. 1975) (“We do not
believe that an inmate’s expectation of keeping a particular
prison job amounts either to a ‘property’ or ‘liberty’ interest
entitled to protection under the due process clause.”)).
9
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.” 42 Pa. C.S. § 9803. Calling Plaintiffs “Debtors” in a
“prison” does not make it so. 9
Second, Plaintiffs do not, and cannot, allege Defendants
knowingly benefitted from an abuse of law, 18 U.S.C.
§ 1589(b), or a “venture” that they “knew or should have
known [was] engaged in an act in violation of” the TVPA, 18
U.S.C. § 1595(a). 10 See Muchira, 850 F.3d at 622–23.
9
Left mostly unsaid is what role the Commonwealth
courts are alleged to play in this scheme. Plaintiffs dance up to
the line stating, “[s]ince at least 2006, a significant number of
the prisoners supplied . . . 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 that “[u]pon
information and belief, individuals deemed able to pay their
[child] support obligations are routinely held in civil
contempt.” App. 130, ¶ 148. That suggests Defendants enjoy a
steady supply of labor courtesy of an at least tacitly complicit
judiciary. Such shocking suggestions demand far more
specificity if they are to support a civil cause of action.
10
On January 5, 2023, Congress enacted the Abolish
Trafficking Reauthorization Act of 2022, which amended
§ 1595(a) to extend liability to “whoever knowingly benefits
or attempts or conspires to benefit” from a TVPA violation.
Pub. L. No. 117-347, 136 Stat. 6199, 6200. Even assuming the
amendment applies retroactively, the new language does not
cure Plaintiffs’ pleading deficiencies which fail to show a
knowing abuse of the law as required by the TVPA.
10
Plaintiffs, and the majority, offer a single speculation: “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.” Maj. Op. at 12, 23. But that
conclusion contains three problems. For one, it is not alleged.
For another, it could not be alleged because, at the risk of
repetition, there is no allegation that the Commonwealth court
erred in setting the purge amount. And finally, if there were
error, it could be corrected in the Commonwealth courts at any
time. This is my key point of disagreement with the majority.
Speculation about Plaintiffs’ choices cannot substitute for the
allegations in the second amended complaint. Perhaps it is
puzzling why they chose jail over supporting their children.
But it is equally puzzling that Plaintiffs would ignore the ample
opportunities to remedy an incorrect contempt finding,
particularly with the able assistance of the half-dozen attorneys
and students from firms, schools, and clinics backed by public
interest groups and the United States Department of Justice.
Yet that is where we stand.
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
11
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
there is no allegation that Defendants were aware Plaintiffs
supposedly could not pay their purge amounts and could not
redress that legal error through the means provided by the
Commonwealth, and thus could be preyed upon by
Defendants’ exploitative venture. The knowledge requirement
of the TVPA demands much more than an awareness of
11
By describing the work Plaintiffs do as repulsive,
counsel perpetuates the stigmatization of “dirty work,” the
“tasks and occupations that are likely to be perceived as
disgusting or degrading.” See Blake E. Ashforth & Glen E.
Kreiner, “How Can You Do It?”: Dirty Work and the
Challenge of Constructing a Positive Identity, 24 Acad. Mgmt.
Rev. 413, 413 (1999). Occupations like recycling are essential
to society but haunted by “[p]hysical taint,” either by
association “with garbage, death, [or] effluent,” or involving
“particularly noxious or dangerous conditions.” Id. at 415. So
the tasks are hidden, the workers “cast as taboo.” Id. at 416.
Yet, “abundant qualitative research from a wide variety of
occupations indicates that people performing dirty work tend
to retain relatively high occupational esteem and pride.” Id. at
413. Rather than bemoaning the conditions of dirty work with
patronizing concerns, we might note the importance of such
labor and its consistency with the goals of the
Commonwealth’s inmate work program “[t]o provide
opportunities for offenders . . . [to] enhance their ability to
become contributing members of the community.” 42 Pa. C.S.
§ 9803.
12
“grueling” work, Maj. Op. at 17, a contrast illustrated by other
cases.
Take Ricchio v. McLean, where a woman was abducted,
driven to another state, and taken to a motel where she was
“physically and sexually abused” for days, with her tormentor
“raping her, starving and drugging her, and leaving her visibly
haggard and bruised,” all part of “grooming her for service as
a prostitute subject to his control.” 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, where attorneys
“acknowledged . . . serious legal questions” about “graphic
evidence of the ceremonial rape of little girls.” 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
13
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 enacted the statute,” Perrin
v. United States, 444 U.S. 37, 42 (1979). This is a “fundamental
canon of statutory construction.” Wis. Cent. Ltd. v. United
States, 138 S. Ct. 2067, 2074 (2018) (quoting Perrin, 444 U.S.
12Seeing no TVPA claim stated, I also see no predicate
act supporting a RICO claim. 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c); In re Ins.
Brokerage Antitrust Litig., 618 F.3d 300, 372 & n.69 (3d Cir.
2010).
13
Like the majority, I review Plaintiffs’ claims under
the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. § 206, and the Pennsylvania Minimum
Wage Act, 43 Pa. C.S. § 333.101 et seq., under the same
standards. See Ford-Greene v. NHS, Inc., 106 F. Supp. 3d 590,
612–13 (E.D. Pa. 2015).
14
at 42). See also Minor v. Mechanics’ Bank of Alexandria, 26
U.S. (1 Pet.) 46, 64 (1828). We interpret the language using all
“the standard tools of interpretation,” Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S.
Ct. 2400, 2414 (2019), reading the words “in their context and
with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme,”
Parker Drilling Mgmt. Servs., Ltd. v. Newton, 139 S. Ct. 1881,
1888 (2019) (citation omitted). See also United States v.
Fisher, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 358, 386 (1805) (“It is undoubtedly
a well established principle in the exposition of statutes, that
every part is to be considered, and the intention of the
legislature to be extracted from the whole.”). And where these
efforts lead to multiple ordinary meanings, we adopt “the best
reading” of the statutory text. Yellen v. Confederated Tribes of
Chehalis Rsrv., 141 S. Ct. 2434, 2442 (2021).
A.
The FLSA states an “employee” is “any individual
employed by an employer,” 29 U.S.C. § 203(e)(1), an
explanation that directs us to technical rather than ordinary
meaning. See Lopez v. Att’y Gen., 49 F.4th 231, 234 n.4 (3d
Cir. 2022). While ordinary and competent English speakers
likely have a reasonable understanding of the word, the FLSA
creates a legal distinction to extend particular rights and
benefits to a limited class. See Moskal v. United States, 498
U.S. 103, 121 (1990) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“[W]hen a statute
employs a term with a specialized legal meaning relevant to the
matter at hand, that meaning governs.”). The definition of
“employee” is part of the specialized guidelines for employers
to comply with requirements for wages and hours, a way to
know who deserves what. Cf. Kasten v. Saint-Gobain
Performance Plastics Corp., 563 U.S. 1, 18 (2011) (Scalia, J.,
dissenting) (looking to the context of the phrase “filed any
complaint” within the FLSA and determining that “at the time
15
the FLSA was passed (and still today) the word [complaint]
when used in a legal context has borne a specialized
meaning”). So the term “must be read by judges with the minds
of the specialists.” Felix Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the
Reading of Statutes, 47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 536 (1947). 14
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 of the whole activity.” Rutherford Food
Corp. v. McComb, 331 U.S. 722, 730 (1947).
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
14
Even though there is not much difference between the
legal and ordinary meaning. See Webster’s New International
Dictionary of the English Language 718 (1930) (defining
employee as “[o]ne employed by another; a clerk or workman
in the service of an employer, usually disting. from official or
officer, or one employed in a position of some authority”).
16
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
15
A meaning that also mirrors ordinary understanding.
See Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English
Language 554 (1930) (custody means “penal safe-keeping;
control of a thing or person with such actual or constructive
possession as fulfills the purpose of the law or duty requiring
it; specif., as to persons, imprisonment”).
17
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.” 42 Pa. C.S. § 9803. Nowhere among these
statutory purposes is earning income. Rather, the programs are
designed with a rehabilitative mindset to benefit both prisoners
and the community—not a typical design for the average
hourly job. All leaving prisoners outside the best legal reading
of the FLSA.
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 Congress is knowledgeable
about existing law pertinent to the legislation it enacts.”
Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486 U.S. 174, 185 (1988).
Just three years before the FLSA’s passage in 1938, Congress
enacted the Ashurst-Sumners Act of 1935, which targeted
unfair competition derived from prison labor by making it
illegal to knowingly transport goods made by prisoners. See 18
U.S.C. §§ 1761–62. See also Danneskjold v. Hausrath, 82 F.3d
37, 42 (2d Cir. 1996) (“[T]he Ashurst-Summers [sic] Act . . .
regulates the interstate transportation of prison-made goods to
18
avoid competition between low-cost prison labor and free
labor . . . .” (citation omitted)). That, as other courts have held,
is strong reason to conclude prisoners are not employees
protected by the FLSA. See, e.g., Danneskjold, 82 F.3d at 42(“[T]he continued existence of the Ashurst-Summers [sic]
Act . . . reveals a congressional assumption that prison labor
will not be paid at FLSA minimum wage levels.”); Harker v.
State Use Indus., 990 F.2d 131, 134 (4th Cir. 1993) (“We must
read [the FLSA and Ashurst-Sumners Act] in pari materia . . . .
[T]he FLSA [] does not apply here because Congress has dealt
more specifically with [the problem of prison goods entering
the open market and threatening fair competition] through the
Ashurst-Sumners Act.”); Vanskike, 974 F.2d at 812 (“[T]he
Ashurst-Sumners Act supports the conclusion that Congress
did not intend to extend the FLSA’s definition of ‘employee’
to prisoners working in prison.”).
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
19
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 But there is nothing rooted in the
16
Prison work serves a different purpose than the
traditional goal of earning a living. “At its root, the work
release program exists for the benefit of the prisoner himself.
The purpose of the program is to prepare inmates upon release
from prison to function as responsible, self-sufficient members
of society.” Reimonenq, 72 F.3d at 476. “Work has been an
important feature of prison systems in the United States since
the colonial period.” Anthony Pierson, Keith Price & Susan
Coleman, Prison Labor, 4 Pol. Bureaucracy & Just. 12, 13
(2014). And “[t]hose offenders who are employed have fewer
disciplinary infractions in prison, obtain better jobs when
released, and recidivate less than do unemployed prisoners.”
Id. at 12. Concepts consistent with the natural principle that
“[t]he want of a useful and honest occupation is the foundation
of an infinite number of mischiefs.” Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui,
The Principles of Natural and Politic Law 435 (Knud
Haakonssen ed. 2006) (1752).
17
The majority concludes Plaintiffs’ work “mirrors” the
facts in Watson where a Sheriff operated an unauthorized work
release program and assigned prisoners to work for his
daughter and son-in-law. See Maj. Op. at 37; Watson v. Graves,
909 F. 2d 1549, 1551 & n.2 (5th Cir. 1990). Watson applied
the “economic reality test” championed by the Ninth Circuit in
20
text of the FLSA or the original understanding of the term
“employee” that suggests work involving a third party or
taking place outside the prison grounds converts a prisoner’s
status into one of an employee in a formal employment
relationship. Prisoners are not employees under the FLSA
because their work relationships “arise out of their status as
inmates, not employees.” Franks v. Okla. State Indus., 7 F.3d
971, 972 (10th Cir. 1993) (cleaned up) (quoting Williams v.
Meese, 926 F.2d 994, 997 (10th Cir. 1991)). “The state’s
absolute power over appellants is a power that is not a
characteristic of—and indeed is inconsistent with—the
bargained-for exchange of labor which occurs in a true
employer-employee relationship.” Gilbreath v. Cutter
Biological, Inc., 931 F.2d 1320, 1325 (9th Cir. 1991). This
reasoning reaches all prisoners inside and outside the prison
walls.
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
Bonnette v. California Health and Welfare Agency, 704 F.2d
1465, 1470 (9th Cir. 1983) and characterized the prisoners as
employees under the FLSA because they worked outside of the
prison. But the economic reality test does not consider the text
of the FLSA and the technical meaning of the word
“employee.” And the statutory history of the FLSA, including
the Ashurst-Sumners Act, casts a shadow on the notion that the
FLSA is Congress’ intended tool for combatting unfair
competition.
18
“Where [an] unjust enrichment claim rests on the
same improper conduct as the underlying tort claim, the unjust
21
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 children 19 and the
enrichment claim will rise or fall with the underlying
claim.” Whitaker v. Herr Foods, Inc., 198 F. Supp. 3d 476, 493
(E.D. Pa. 2016). As Plaintiffs have no valid TVPA or FLSA
claim, they have no unjust enrichment claim, as the District
Court properly concluded.
19
See 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries *435
(1765) (“The duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of
their children is a principle of natural law; an obligation . . .
laid on them not only by nature herself, but by their own proper
act, in bringing them into the world . . . . By begetting them
therefore they have entered into a voluntary obligation, to
endeavour, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have
bestowed shall be supported and preserved. And thus the
children will have a perfect right of receiving maintenance
from their parents.”); Burlamaqui, Principles of Natural and
Politic Law 61 (“Providence for this reason has inspired
22
“great importance to use every endeavour to banish idleness,
that fruitful source of disorders.” Burlamaqui, Principles of
Natural and Politic Law 435. 20
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.
parents with that instinct or natural tenderness, which prompts
them so eagerly to delight in the most troublesome cares, for
the preservation and good of those whom they have brought
into the world.”); Samuel Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man,
According to the Law of Nature 179 (Knud Haakonssen ed.,
Jean Barbeyrac trans. 2003) (1673) (“Because the Law of
Nature it self, when Man was made a Social Creature, injoin’d
to Parents the Care of their Children.”).
20
See also John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
§§ 32, 42 (1689) (“God, when he gave the world in common to
all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury
of his condition required it of him. . . . [W]hen any one hath
computed, he will then see how much labour makes the far
greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this
world . . . .”).
23