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Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock, 608 U.S. ___ (2026)

By Joel Reinecke (Law Clerk)

The Supreme Court unanimously held that the Federal Arbitration Act’s (“FAA”) transportation-worker exemption may apply to workers who transport goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey without crossing state lines or interacting with vehicles that do.

Background

Defendant Flowers Foods, Inc. is a leading producer of packaged baked goods. Flowers distributes its products across the country, depending in part on franchisees to deliver its products to stores. Plaintiff Angelo Brock is a Flowers franchisee servicing the Denver area who picks up Flowers’ products from a warehouse in Colorado and delivers them to local stores without leaving the State. As a Flowers franchisee, Brock had signed a distribution agreement promising to arbitrate any disagreement between himself and Flowers.

In 2022, Brock sued Flowers in federal district court alleging that the company had underpaid him and other distributors. In response, Flowers filed a motion to send the dispute to arbitration. Flowers argued that the Federal Arbitration Act’s (FAA) general requirement to stay or dismiss cases when the parties have agreed to resolve their disputes by arbitration applied to Brock’s suit considering the distribution agreement. The district court denied Flowers’s motion. The Tenth Circuit affirmed.

The Tenth Circuit affirmed the denial of Flowers’s motion because Brock’s intrastate route formed a constituent part of an interstate journey

The Tenth Circuit reasoned that the court lacked the authority to compel arbitration under the exception to section 1 of the FAA. Section 1 provides that “nothing” in the FAA shall be used to compel arbitration in disputes involving “contracts of employment” of any “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” The court reasoned that Brock belonged to a class of employees engaged in interstate commerce because Brock’s “intrastate route formed a constituent part of the . . . interstate journey” of Flowers’s goods from out-of-state bakeries to their intended destinations at Colorado retail stores.

Flowers petitioned for certiorari, which the Court granted. The Court resolved a single question: can someone qualify as a worker “engaged in . . . interstate commerce” under section 1 if they neither cross state lines nor interact with vehicles that do?

The Supreme Court held that someone could qualify for section 1’s exemption without crossing state lines or interacting with vehicles that do

The Court affirmed the Tenth Circuit, rejecting Flowers’s sole theory. Flowers argued that a worker must cross state lines or interact with a vehicle that does to be engaged in interstate commerce under section 1. The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Gorsuch, held that a worker could qualify for section 1’s exemption without satisfying either criterion.

Before proceeding with its substantive analysis, the Court noted that a worker can be engaged in interstate commerce under section 1 without crossing state lines under Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 596 U.S. 450 (2022).

The text of section 1’s exemption does not require an individual to cross state lines or interact with a vehicle that does.

Section 1’s exemption applies to “workers engaged in . . . interstate commerce.” The Court noted that at the time of the FAA’s enactment, “engage” meant “to take part in” something, while “interstate commerce” meant “the transportation of persons or property between or among the several states of the Union, or from or between points in one state and points in another state.” Thus, a person can “take part in” the continuous journey of a product “between points in one state and points in another state” without leaving a State or touching vehicles that do, qualifying for section 1’s exemption.

The Court’s precedent does not require an individual to cross state lines or interact with a vehicle that does to be engaged in interstate commerce.

The Court presented a hypothetical to illustrate its point. In the hypothetical, three drivers work together to deliver goods from one State to another. The first driver takes goods to the second driver, who crosses the State border and delivers the goods to the third driver, who completes the delivery. Only the second driver crosses a State boundary. Under Flowers’s theory, only the second driver would be engaged in interstate commerce. Under the theory endorsed by the Court, all three drivers would be engaged in interstate commerce.

The Court cited four cases that had similar facts as the second hypothetical. See The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall. 557 (1871); Rearick v. Pennsylvania, 203 U.S. 507 (1906); Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U.S. 412 (1898); Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 136 U.S. 114 (1890). In each case, the Court held that transportation occurring entirely within one State can constitute interstate commerce when it forms part of a continuous interstate shipment. However, these cases interpreted the Commerce Clause, not section 1 of the FAA. Nevertheless, the Court held that these cases offered “probative evidence” of what an “ordinary person at the time of the FAA’s enactment” would have understood “engaged in interstate commerce” to mean.

Practical significance

Flowers Foods broadly interprets the exemption in section 1 of the FAA. Future litigation is likely to focus on the issues left unresolved by the Flowers Foods Court, including the relevance of contractual relationships, ownership of goods, and whether workers are sufficiently connected to a continuous interstate shipment.

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm or its clients. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

This article was originally published in the California Lawyers Association E-Briefs, News and Notes: July 2026