Flower Foods v. Brock

Questions presented

SCOTUS records, cert granted 20 Oct 2025

Are workers who deliver locally goods that travel in interstate commerce-but who do not transport the goods across borders nor interact with vehicles that cross borders-"transportation workers" "engaged in foreign or interstate commerce" for purposes of the Federal Arbitration Act's § 1 exemption?

Opinion summary

Etalia.ai summary of the majority opinion

The dispute was whether Flowers Foods could compel arbitration of Brock’s wage-and-law claims under the Federal Arbitration Act, or whether Brock fell within the Act’s exemption for workers engaged in interstate commerce. Brock picked up Flowers products in Colorado and delivered them to local stores without leaving the state. The Court, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, held that a worker can qualify for the exemption even if he never crosses state lines or interacts with vehicles that do, so long as he transports goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey. The Court said the statutory text, historical usage, and earlier cases like The Daniel Ball support that reading, and it rejected Flowers’s bright-line rule that crossing state lines or interacting with vehicles is required. The judgment of the Tenth Circuit was affirmed.