Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca2-18-00359/USCOURTS-ca2-18-00359-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 190
Nature of Suit: Other Contract Actions
Cause of Action: 

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SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part:

While I concur in Parts I and II of the majority’s decision, I respectfully 

dissent with respect to Part III. Specifically, I disagree with the majority regarding

the proper standard to be applied in determining whether plaintiffs are “similarly 

situated” for the purposes of a collective action under 29 U.S.C § 216(b). 

Furthermore, I believe that the district court’s decertification of the collective 

action was not an abuse of discretion when judged against the correct standard. 

Accordingly, I would affirm the district court’s ruling in its entirety.

I.

First, the majority’s newly minted definition of “similarly situated” – i.e., 

that “named plaintiffs and opt-in plaintiffs share one or more issues of law or fact 

that are material to the disposition of their FLSA claims” regardless of any 

“dissimilarities in other respects,” Maj. Op. at 29 (emphasis added) – has no basis 

in the text of the statute. As the majority concedes, the FLSA nowhere defines the 

term “similarly situated,” leaving the words to be interpreted in accordance with

their plain meaning and the reasoned judgment of district judges tasked with 

assessing the universe of facts available in a given case. Common sense would 

suggest that “similarly situated” often requires more than the sharing of a single 

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fact or legal issue, and that the existence of multiple dissimilarities would be 

highly relevant to the inquiry. The majority’s definition – equating “similarly 

situated” with “any similarity” – lowers the bar for collective actions, and reduces

district courts to mere bystanders rather than gatekeepers.

Unlike the majority, I do not view the differences between Rule 23 and 

§ 216(b) as supporting the “any similarity” standard. To be sure, the standards 

under Rule 23 and § 216(b) are wholly “independent of, and unrelated to” one 

another, Kern v. Siemens Corp., 393 F.3d 120, 128 (2d Cir. 2004) (quoting Grayson v. 

K Mart Corp., 79 F.3d 1086, 1096 n.12 (11th Cir. 1996)), and the requirements of 

§ 216(b) are less stringent than those of Rule 23, see Myers v. Hertz Corp., 624 F.3d 

537, 555–56 (2d Cir. 2010), in part because courts are not faced with the same due 

process concerns regarding absent class members that they face in a class action 

under Rule 23, see Hoffman v. Sbarro, Inc., 982 F. Supp. 249, 263 n.17 (S.D.N.Y. 1997) 

(Sotomayor, J.) (observing that Rule 23 is designed in part to protect the due 

process rights of absent class members, a concern that is not present in the FLSA 

context). Nevertheless, I am not convinced that Rule 23 and § 216(b) serve 

“fundamentally different purposes,” Maj. Op. at 38, or that their differences are so 

substantial as to make the “similarly situated” requirement of § 216(b) a mere 

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formality. “Section 216(b) of the FLSA and Rule 23(b)(3) are animated by similar 

concerns about the efficient resolution of common claims.” Calderone v. Scott, 838 

F.3d 1101, 1103 (11th Cir. 2016). While plaintiffs must make an additional showing

to be certified as a class under Rule 23, neither plaintiffs nor the court would be 

significantly benefited if plaintiffs were allowed to proceed collectively despite 

having drastically different material facts or different legal claims simply because 

they share a single common fact or legal issue. See Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc. v. 

Sperling, 493 U.S. 165, 170 (1989) (“A collective action allows . . . plaintiffs the 

advantage of lower individual costs to vindicate rights by the pooling of resources. 

The judicial system benefits by efficient resolution in one proceeding of common 

issues of law and fact arising from the same alleged discriminatory activity.” (emphasis 

added)); see also Zavala v. Wal Mart Stores Inc., 691 F.3d 527, 538 (3d Cir. 2012)

(explaining that “simply sharing a common status, like being an illegal 

immigrant,” and being subject to a “common scheme” does not amount to being 

“similarly situated” if “[l]iability and damages still need to be individually 

proven”). Although the majority is undoubtedly correct that “where the 

conditions of § 216(b) are met, employees have a substantive ‘right’ to proceed as 

a collective,” Maj. Op. at 38, plaintiffs must, as a threshold matter, actually satisfy 

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those conditions – including that they are “similarly situated.” Where they cannot, 

employees will nonetheless continue to have an incentive to bring FLSA suits

individually, particularly since prevailing plaintiffs will still be entitled to

attorneys’ fees under the statute even if the damages award is modest. See Fisher 

v. SD Prot. Inc., 948 F.3d 593, 604 (2d Cir. 2020) (emphasizing that there is no 

requirement that attorneys’ fees be proportional to the settlement amount, as 

“[t]he whole purpose of fee-shifting statutes is to generate attorneys’ fees that are 

disproportionate to the plaintiff's recovery” (emphasis omitted) (quoting Millea v. 

Metro-N. R. Co., 658 F.3d 154, 169 (2d Cir. 2011)). 

I am equally unpersuaded by the majority’s critique of the ad hoc test 

employed by the district court and many other courts around the country. Maj. 

Op. at 31. Most of the cases cited by the majority are readily distinguishable, and

do in fact assess some of the factors identified under the so-called ad hoc test. See 

Halle v. W. Penn Allegheny Health Sys. Inc., 842 F.3d 215, 226 (3d Cir. 2016) 

(emphasizing that courts should consider “all relevant factors . . . on a case-by-case 

basis,” including “the factual and employment settings of . . . plaintiffs, the 

different defenses . . . , the degree of fairness and procedural impact of certifying 

the action . . . , and whether plaintiffs have made the appropriate filings with the 

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EEOC”); McGlone v. Contract Callers, Inc., 49 F. Supp. 3d 364, 367 (S.D.N.Y. 2014) 

(looking not to a single question of law or fact but rather “common questions of 

law and fact,” and specifically noting that courts typically consider the ad hoc 

factors). The majority leans most heavily upon the Ninth Circuit’s decision in 

Campbell v. City of Los Angeles, 903 F.3d 1090 (9th Cir. 2018), which contains broad 

language that arguably supports the majority’s expansive “similarly situated” 

requirement. But while the Ninth Circuit disapproved of the ad hoc approach “as 

it is typically articulated,” even it clarified that it did not intend to “preclude the 

district court[] from employing . . . a version of the ad hoc test modified so as to 

account for the flaws” it had identified. Id. at 1117, 1117 n.21.

To me, it seems obvious that an assessment of whether plaintiffs are 

“similarly situated” requires the application of an ad hoc test that leaves district 

courts free to consider the myriad factors – including both similarities and 

dissimilarities – at play in a given case. See Zavala, 691 F.3d at 537–38 (finding that 

the plaintiffs had failed to satisfy the “similarly situated standard” because “[t]he 

similarities among the proposed plaintiffs are too few, and the differences among 

the proposed plaintiffs are too many” such that there would be “minimal utility in 

streamlining resolution of the claims”). Although the requirements under Rule 23 

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and § 216(b) are different, we have in fact recognized that the predominance 

inquiry under Rule 23 and the “similarly situated” standard under § 216(b) are 

“admittedly similar.” See Myers, 624 F.3d at 556. A district court should thus 

consider similarities such as “whether the plaintiffs are employed in the same 

corporate department, division, and location; whether they advance similar 

claims; whether they seek substantially the same form of relief; and whether they 

have similar salaries and circumstances of employment.” Karlo v. Pittsburgh Glass 

Works, LLC, 849 F.3d 61, 85 (3d Cir. 2017) (emphases omitted) (quoting Zavala, 691 

F.3d at 536–37). It should then weigh these against any dissimilarities, such as the

“disparate factual and employment settings of the individual plaintiffs” and 

“defenses available to defendants which appear to be individual to each plaintiff.” 

Scott v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., No. 12-cv-8333 (ALC) (SN), 2017 WL 1287512, 

at *8 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 29, 2017) (quoting Hernandez v. Fresh Diet, Inc., No. 12-cv-4339 

(ALC) (JLC), 2014 WL 5039431, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 29, 2014)); see also Zavala, 691 

F.3d at 536–37 (“Plaintiffs may also be found dissimilar based on the existence of 

individualized defenses.”). In weighing these factors, a court should consider 

“fairness and procedural considerations counseling for or against collective action 

treatment.” Scott, 2017 WL 1287512, at *8 (quoting Hernandez, 2014 WL 5039431, at 

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*3. In my view, this standard more appropriately accounts for the “flaws” 

identified by the court in Campbell while still promoting efficient and just 

resolution of claims. 

I am thus less troubled than the majority that “courts facing parallel motions 

to decertify an FLSA collective action under § 216(b) and to certify a class action 

under Rule 23 have tended to allow either both actions or neither to proceed on a 

collective basis.” Maj. Op. at 34 (quoting Ruiz v. CitiBank, N.A., 93 F. Supp. 3d 279, 

298–99 (S.D.N.Y. 2015)). While the two provisions are surely distinct, such an 

outcome would seem to be a natural result of two statutes that allow for class 

treatment based on some showing of similarity between plaintiffs. In sum, rather 

than being forced to certify a collective if plaintiffs share a single common issue, 

the district court, with the benefit of having reviewed volumes of record evidence 

after years of discovery, should be able to weigh the similarities and dissimilarities 

to determine if plaintiffs are “similarly situated” such that the collective action

mechanism is the appropriate vehicle for the claims at issue. 

II.

Having defined what I view as the appropriate standard, I also depart from 

the majority’s application of the law to the facts here. While one can quibble with 

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the propriety of the district court’s reference to the “sliding scale” standard, it 

seems to me that the district court’s ultimate conclusion in this case was wholly 

justified. See Farrior v. Waterford Bd. of Educ., 277 F.3d 633, 635 (2d Cir. 2002)

(upholding the district court’s decision where it misstated the standard but 

properly analyzed the claims). The district court cited the ad hoc factors “[t]o 

avoid conflating § 216(b) collective certification with Rule 23,” and I see no 

evidence that its analysis was in fact driven by the more stringent requirements of 

Rule 23. Scott, 2017 WL 1287512, at *8. Instead, the district court concluded that 

despite the possibility that one could identify a common issue among Plaintiffs, 

the similarities were superficial. Its decision was supported by factual findings,

and to my mind at least, was not an abuse of discretion. 

For all of these reasons, I would affirm the district court’s ruling in all 

respects. I therefore dissent from Part III of the majority’s opinion. 

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