Court Opinion

ID: 9379413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-15 17:01:05.205337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:00.744885
License: Public Domain

PRECEDENTIAL

       UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
            FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
                 _____________

                     No. 21-3286
                    _____________

STEPHANIE HIGGINS, for herself and all others similarly
 situated; SHERRI KRAMER; MEGHAN TANEYHILL;
     YVETTE MARSHALL; MARGARET MAGEE;
          SHELLY NEAL; SHEILA LEVESQUE,
                                    Appellants

                           v.

        BAYADA HOME HEALTH CARE INC.
               _______________

     On Appeal from the United States District Court
        For the Middle District of Pennsylvania
                (D.C. No. 3-16-cv-02382)
      District Judge: Honorable Jennifer P. Wilson
                   _______________

                       Argued
                   November 9, 2022

   Before: CHAGARES, Chief Judge, JORDAN, and
             SCIRICA, Circuit Judges
                  (Filed March 15, 2023)
                    _______________

Teresa M. Becvar [ARGUED]
Haley R. Jenkins
Ryan F. Stephan
James B. Zouras
Stephan Zouras
100 North Riverside Plaza
Suite 2150
Chicago, IL 60606

David J. Cohen
604 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
      Counsel for Appellants

Thomas G. Collins [ARGUED]
Cheri A. Sparacino
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney
409 N. Second Street
Suite 500
Harrisburg, PA 17101

Gretchen W. Root
Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney
501 Grant Street
Suite 200
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
      Counsel for Appellee
                     _______________

                OPINION OF THE COURT

                               2
                      _______________

JORDAN, Circuit Judge.

        Stephanie Higgins and her co-plaintiffs, the appellants
before us now, filed a collective action and putative class
action alleging that their employer, Bayada Home Care, Inc.,
made improper deductions from their accumulated paid time
off (which, with apologies for the several acronyms we are
about to use, we join the parties in calling “PTO”). The
plaintiffs argue that the deductions were effectively reductions
in their salary and thus made in violation of the Fair Labor
Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq., and state
employment laws, including, as relevant to Higgins, the
Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (“PMWA”), 43 P.S.
§ 333.101, et seq. Their primary contention is that PTO
qualifies as salary under the FLSA and its related regulations,
and that, by deducting from their PTO, Bayada made
deductions from their salary, which is something the FLSA and
regulations forbid. The District Court saw a meaningful
distinction between PTO and salary and so granted partial
summary judgment for Bayada. The Court then certified its
decision for immediate appeal.

       Whether PTO is part of an employee’s salary for the
purposes of the FLSA is an issue of first impression for us. We
hold, based on the plain meaning of the regulatory language
promulgated under the FLSA, that PTO is not part of an
employee’s salary. In short, we will affirm.

                               3
I.     BACKGROUND1

       Higgins is a registered nurse who formerly worked for
Bayada, a company providing medical and related support
services for patients in their homes. 2 During her employment
with Bayada, which lasted from September 2012 to September
2016, Higgins, like her co-plaintiffs and all full-time salaried
employees,3 was required to meet a weekly “productivity
minimum.”

       Bayada health care employees, sometimes called
“Clinicians,”4 are paid a salary but, to meet their productivity
minimums, must accumulate a specified number of
“productivity points” a week – each point being roughly

       1
         On review of the summary judgment ruling, we review
the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmovants, the
plaintiffs-appellants. Andrews v. Scuilli, 853 F.3d 690, 696 (3d
Cir. 2017).
       2
         Bayada is headquartered in New Jersey, employs
approximately 28,000 employees, and provides home health
care services to patients in 23 states.
       3
        The other named plaintiffs in this case – Judith Groop,
Alicia Heisey, Christine DeGrazia, Bernadette Salopek, and
Harold Beardsley – all worked for Bayada at various times
from 2008 to 2018.
       4
        The term “Clinician,” as the plaintiffs use it, includes
“Registered Nurses, Physical Therapists, Occupational
Therapists, Speech Language Pathologists, and Medical Social
Workers.” (Opening Br. at 4 n.2.)

                               4
equivalent to 1.33 hours of work – which are awarded in
exchange for completing work tasks. A routine visit to a
patient’s home, for example, is assigned one point. If an
employee anticipates that she will not meet her productivity
minimum, she can make up the deficit by performing office
work or additional home visits. Employees can request an
increase or decrease in their weekly productivity minimums,
corresponding to a commensurate increase or decrease in pay. 5

       When Bayada employees exceed their productivity
minimums, they receive additional compensation. On the
other hand, if employees fail to meet their weekly productivity
minimums, Bayada withdraws from their available PTO to
supplement the difference between the points they were
expected to earn and what they actually earned. Bayada does
not, however, deduct from an employee’s guaranteed base
salary when the employee lacks sufficient PTO to cover a
productivity point deficit. The only circumstance in which
Bayada would reduce an employee’s salary is if the employee
voluntarily takes a day off without sufficient PTO. 6

      When Higgins began working for Bayada, she had a 30-
point weekly productivity minimum, but, at her request,
Bayada reduced her minimum to 25 points. She met her

      5
       The amount of PTO an employee earns is likewise
based on an employee’s productivity minimum. Bayada
employees can earn up to four weeks of PTO per year.
      6
        Bayada employees without available PTO may, “on a
limited basis,” take days off under Bayada’s “Day No Pay
Payroll Procedures.” (App. at 6.)

                              5
productivity minimum most weeks, sometimes exceeding it
but sometimes falling short. Higgins asserts that she was under
the impression that if she failed to meet her productivity
minimum and lacked sufficient PTO to cover the productivity
point deficit, Bayada would make a deduction from her base
salary.7 Yet she never exhausted her available PTO, and there
is no evidence that Bayada ever docked her salary or that of
any other plaintiff.

       As already noted, the District Court granted summary
judgment for Bayada on the FLSA claim. It also did so on
Higgins’s PMWA claim. The District Court did not, however,
resolve the putative class claims brought by the six other
named plaintiffs under the employment laws of the states in
which they worked. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs asked the
District Court to certify its summary judgment order for
immediate appeal pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
54(b) and to stay all court proceedings pending the appeal. The
District Court complied, converting its partial summary
judgment ruling into an appealable decision. This timely
appeal followed.

       7
         Higgins testified that she could not recall anyone
advising her that Bayada would make a deduction from her
base salary.

                              6
II.    DISCUSSION8

       A.     PTO deductions do not violate the FLSA

        In their appeal, the plaintiffs assert that Bayada’s
productivity points system is a mere proxy for compensating
the total hours worked by its employees because “point values
directly correlate to the amount of time Bayada expects job
tasks to take[.]” (Opening Br. at 3-7.) According to the
plaintiffs, that point system, together with Bayada’s practice of
deducting PTO from their accrued amounts of PTO, or “leave
banks,” if they failed to meet weekly productivity minimums,
demonstrates that Bayada treats its health care employees as
wage earners whose total compensation is pegged to the
number of hours they work.

       Without a bit of background on the FLSA and the
distinction between salaried employees and wage-earners, the

       8
          The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 28
U.S.C. § 1331, as the FLSA claims arise under the laws of the
United States.      The District Court had supplemental
jurisdiction over Higgins’s state law claim pursuant to 28
U.S.C. § 1367. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§ 1291. We exercise plenary review over the District Court’s
grant of summary judgment, “[d]rawing all reasonable
inferences in favor of the party against whom judgment is
sought,” and affirming a grant of summary judgment “only
when no issues of material fact exist and the party for whom
judgment is entered is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
Prusky v. Reliastar Life Ins. Co., 445 F.3d 695, 699 (3d Cir.
2006).

                               7
parties’ dispute on this issue may be hard to understand. It
comes down to money. Bayada classifies its Clinicians as
salaried employees, and, as we explain further herein, the
FLSA basically says that such employees do not get overtime
pay. One’s salary is what it is, no matter how many hours one
works. See 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1) (exempting salaried
employees from the FLSA’s overtime pay requirement).
People who earn an hourly wage, by contrast, are entitled under
the FLSA to receive one-and-a-half times their regular hourly
wage for every hour they work beyond a traditional forty-hour
week. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). So that they can claim
entitlement to time-and-a-half overtime pay, the plaintiffs want
to be treated as wage-earners, and they assert that Bayada’s
productivity point system “is plainly inconsistent with their
classification” as salaried employees exempt from the FLSA’s
overtime pay requirement. (Opening Br. at 5.)

       In a second but related argument, the plaintiffs claim
that Bayada “actively and deliberately fosters confusion about
its use of PTO time to offset Clinicians’ productivity
shortfalls” and “intentionally leads Clinicians to believe that,
if their PTO is exhausted and they earn fewer than their
minimum productivity points in a workweek, they will only be
paid for the productivity points they have earned that week.”
(Opening Br. at 10.)

        Both of those arguments miss the mark, however,
because the key question when determining the legal
classification of an employee for FLSA purposes is not
whether a pay structure approximates an hourly wage or even
whether an employer threatens to dock a salaried employee’s
base pay; it is whether an employer made an actual deduction

                               8
from an employee’s base pay. 9 There is no evidence here that
Bayada reduced the guaranteed base pay of any of the
plaintiffs.

       9
          In their Opening Brief, the plaintiffs assert that the
District Court erred by not considering their “Statement of
Uncontested Material Facts.” They argue that, even though the
District Court decided that those facts were barred by the
Middle District of Pennsylvania’s Local Rule 56.1, which
prohibits counterstatements of material facts, the District Court
was still required to conduct a full analysis of the record to
determine if granting summary judgment was appropriate. The
District Court’s supposed error in not considering that
document has no bearing on the outcome of this case because
the document does not contain any disputed issues of material
fact. While the document states that “Plaintiffs testified that
they were not paid a salary[,]” (App. at 537), and “Bayada does
not pay [employees who fail to achieve their productivity
minimum] a salary,” (App. at 540), those conclusory
allegations do not shed light on whether Bayada made a
deduction from one of its employee’s base salary.
Additionally, the document contains a statement from named
plaintiff Alicia Heisey, who said that, during her interview for
employment with Bayada, a Bayada interviewer told her that if
she lacked PTO, then her salary was not guaranteed. But,
again, and as elaborated below, the material question is
whether Bayada made an actual deduction from anyone’s
salary.

                               9
             1.     The FLSA prohibits an actual and
                    improper     deduction from   an
                    employee’s salary

        As already noted, the FLSA generally requires an
employer to pay its employees a minimum of one and a half
times their rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of forty
hours during a week. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). There is,
however, an exception to the FLSA’s overtime pay
requirement. It does not apply to those employees “employed
in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional
capacity[.]” 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1). Under § 213(a)(1) of the
statute (as codified), the Secretary of Labor has the authority
to define the term “professional,” and the Secretary has issued
regulations to that end. For an employee to be considered a
“professional,” an employer must, among other things, show
that the employee is paid on a “salary basis.”10 29 C.F.R.
§ 541.600 (2021). The Department of Labor defines a salary
basis pay schedule in § 541.602(a) of the regulation, as
follows:

      10
          There are two other professional status requirements,
which are not at issue in this case. First, an employer must
demonstrate that the employee in question earns at least $684
per week. 29 C.F.R. §§ 541.300(a)(1), 541.600. Second, an
employer must demonstrate that the employee’s work
“[r]equir[es] knowledge of an advanced type in a field of
science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course
of specialized intellectual instruction; or ... [r]equir[es]
invention, imagination, originality or talent in a recognized
field of artistic or creative endeavor.” Id. § 541.300(a)(2).

                              10
       An employee will be considered to be paid on a
       “salary basis” … if the employee regularly
       receives each pay period on a weekly, or less
       frequent basis, a predetermined amount
       constituting all or part of the employee’s
       compensation, which amount is not subject to
       reduction because of variations in the quality or
       quantity of the work performed.

Id. § 541.602(a).

       The regulation goes on to say that a salaried employee
“must receive the full salary for any week in which the
employee performs any work without regard to the number of
days or hours worked. [Salaried] employees need not be paid
for any workweek in which they perform no work.” Id.
§ 541.602(a)(1) (emphasis added). And, further,

       An employee is not paid on a salary basis if
       deductions from the employee’s predetermined
       compensation are made for absences occasioned
       by the employer or by the operating
       requirements of the business. If the employee is
       ready, willing and able to work, deductions may
       not be made for time when work is not available.

Id. § 541.602(a)(2) (emphasis added). 11

       11
          Paragraph (b) of § 541.602 delineates specific
exceptions to the “prohibition against deductions from pay in
the salary basis requirement[,]” including that “[d]eductions
from pay may be made when an exempt employee[, i.e., one

                              11
       Supplementing § 541.602 is § 541.603, which explains
that an employer may not diverge from paying its employees
on a salary basis, lest the employees lose their status as workers
exempt from the wage and overtime requirements of the
FLSA.12 Thus, if an employer has an “actual practice” of

that is exempt from the overtime pay requirement, such as a
salaried employee,] is absent from work for one or more full
days for personal reasons, other than sickness or disability.” 29
C.F.R. § 541.602(b)(1). The regulation provides the following
example:
        [I]f an employee is absent for two full days to
        handle personal affairs, the employee’s salaried
        status will not be affected if deductions are made
        from the salary for two full-day absences.
        However, if an exempt employee is absent for
        one and a half days for personal reasons, the
        employer can deduct only for the one full-day
        absence.
Id.
       12
          That provision provides as follows:
       An employer who makes improper deductions
       from salary shall lose the exemption if the facts
       demonstrate that the employer did not intend to
       pay employees on a salary basis. An actual
       practice of making improper deductions
       demonstrates that the employer did not intend to
       pay employees on a salary basis. The factors to
       consider when determining whether an employer
       has an actual practice of making improper
       deductions include, but are not limited to: the

                               12
making improper deductions from an employee’s salary, that
employee is not paid on a salary basis and is not to be
considered a professional employee exempt from the FLSA’s
overtime pay requirement. Id. § 541.603(a).

              2.     PTO does not constitute a component
                     of an employee’s salary under the
                     FLSA

        As there is no question that Bayada made deductions
from the plaintiffs’ PTO, the question here is whether PTO
constitutes part of an employee’s salary under the FLSA and
its related regulations. If PTO is part of an employee’s salary,
then Bayada’s practice of deducting PTO from its employees’
leave banks when they do not meet their weekly productivity
points minimums is a practice of making actual and improper
deductions under the FLSA. And that would cause Bayada to
forfeit the overtime-pay exemption that currently applies to its
Clinicians.

      number of improper deductions, particularly as
      compared to the number of employee infractions
      warranting discipline; the time period during
      which the employer made improper deductions;
      the number and geographic location of
      employees whose salary was improperly
      reduced; the number and geographic location of
      managers responsible for taking the improper
      deductions; and whether the employer has a
      clearly communicated policy permitting or
      prohibiting improper deductions.
29 C.F.R. § 541.603(a) (emphasis added).

                              13
        Neither the FLSA nor its related regulations explicitly
define the term “salary.” There nevertheless appears to be a
clear distinction between salary and fringe benefits like PTO.
The discussion of salary in § 541.602(a)(1) of the regulations
requires that “an exempt employee … receive the full salary
for any week in which the employee performs any work
without regard to the number of days or hours worked.” Id.
An employer does not violate those conditions by deducting
from an employee’s PTO because, when an employer docks an
employee’s PTO, but not her base pay, the predetermined
amount that the employee receives at the end of a pay period
does not change. In other words, “the employee [will continue
to] regularly receive[] each pay period on a weekly, or less
frequent basis, a predetermined amount constituting all or part
of the employee’s compensation[.]” Id.

       That an employee might at some point be able to convert
her PTO into cash does not alter that fact. The regulation
requires only that the employee receive a predetermined
amount of money each pay period that is “part of the
employee’s compensation[.]” Id. (emphasis added). So long
as the employer does not dock that pre-determined part of the
employee’s compensation, the employer has satisfied the
salary basis test. 13

       13
         Plaintiffs argue that the failure to meet a productivity
minimum should not be understood as an absence. The reason
an employer deducts PTO, however, is not material to our
inquiry. As the District Court noted, an employer may deduct
fringe benefits if an employee fails to meet an expectation,
such as a productivity minimum, so long as the employee’s
salary remains the same. See Higgins v. Bayada Home Health
Care, Inc., 2021 WL 4306125, *11 (M.D. Pa. Sep. 22, 2021).

                               14
        The meaning and historical usage of the terms “salary”
and “fringe benefit” likewise supports reading the regulation in
a way that makes the two terms mutually exclusive. Shortly
after the FLSA’s enactment in 1938, the Department of Labor
promulgated its first regulation defining the exemption to the
overtime pay requirement. 3 Fed. Reg. 2518 (Oct. 20, 1938)
(to be codified at 29 C.F.R. pt. 541). The Department issued a
revised regulation in 1940, which instituted the salary basis test
and explicitly used the term “salary.” 5 Fed. Reg. 4077-48
(Oct. 15, 1940) (to be codified at 29 C.F.R. pt. 541). The
second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary,
published less than a decade before the Department
implemented the salary basis rule, defines salary as “[t]he
recompense or consideration paid, or stipulated to be paid, to a
person at regular intervals for services, esp. to holders of
official, executive, or clerical positions; fixed compensation
regularly paid, as by the year, quarter, month, or week … now
often distinguished from wages.” Salary, Webster’s New
International Dictionary, Second Edition, Unabridged (1934).
Although that edition did not define “fringe benefit” – as that
term seems not to have entered the lexicon until later 14 – it
makes clear that salary, which is defined in contrast to wages,
is “fixed compensation regularly paid[.]”

       The third edition of Webster’s New International
Dictionary does contain definitions for both terms. Like its
predecessor, it defines “salary” as “fixed compensation paid

       14
               Fringe      benefit,      Merriam-Webster.com,
https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/fringe%20benefits (last visited Dec.
20, 2022) (listing 1948 as the year of first known use).

                               15
regularly (as by the year, quarter, month, or week) for services
[especially for] holders of official, executive or clerical
positions often – distinguished from wage[.]”            Salary,
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged
(1986). It defines fringe benefit, by contrast, as “an
employment benefit (as a pension, a paid holiday, or health
insurance) granted by an employer that involves a money cost
without affecting basic wage rates[.]” Fringe Benefit,
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged
(1986).

       Other dictionaries also distinguish “salary” from “fringe
benefits.” Black’s Law Dictionary defines “salary” as “[a]n
agreed compensation for services – esp. professional or
semiprofessional services – usu[ally] paid at regular intervals
on a yearly basis, as distinguished from an hourly basis.”
Salary, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). By contrast,
a “fringe benefit” is “[a] benefit (other than direct salary or
compensation) received by an employee from an employer,
such as insurance, a company car, or a tuition allowance.”
Benefit, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). Compare
also Salary, Merriam-Webster.com, https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/salary (last visited Dec. 20, 2022)
(“fixed compensation paid regularly for services.”) with Fringe
benefit,    Merriam-Webster.com,         https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/fringe%20benefits (last visited Dec.
20, 2022) (“an employment benefit (such as a pension or a paid
holiday) granted by an employer that has a monetary value but
does not affect basic wage rates” or “any additional benefit.”).

       So, whereas salary is a fixed amount of compensation
that an employee regularly receives, PTO, though having a
monetary value, is more appropriately defined as a fringe

                              16
benefit, which has no effect on the employee’s salary or wages,
and which may be irregularly paid out, such as when an
employee separates from a company. The two concepts being
distinct, the term “salary” as used in the FLSA is best
understood as not including fringe benefits like PTO. 15

       15
          Because we hold that salary is distinguishable from
fringe benefits like PTO, we need not consider the
Department’s interpretation of those regulatory terms. See
Kisor v. Wilkie, 139 S. Ct. 2400, 2415 (2019) (“[A] court
should not [defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own
regulation] unless the regulation is genuinely ambiguous. …
And before concluding that a rule is genuinely ambiguous, a
court must exhaust all the ‘traditional tools’ of construction.
… To make that effort, a court must ‘carefully consider[ ]’ the
text, structure, history, and purpose of a regulation, in all the
ways it would if it had no agency to fall back on. … If genuine
ambiguity remains, moreover, the agency’s reading must still
be ‘reasonable.’” (internal citation and quotation marks
omitted) (alternations in original)).
        Bayada contends that courts, by “habitually defer[ing]
to the Secretary’s interpretations” of the regulations, have
“uph[eld] the distinction between pay and leave for purposes
of determining whether deductions defeat an employer’s
claimed overtime exemption.” (Answering Br. at 41). The
decisions cited by Bayada, however – apart from Coates v.
Dassault Falcon Jet Corp., 961 F.3d 1039 (8th Cir. 2020) –
were decided prior to Kisor, which substantially circumscribed
so-called Auer deference, i.e., the deference owed to an
agency’s interpretation of its own regulations. See Auer v.
Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461 (1997) (“Because the salary-basis
test is a creature of the Secretary’s own regulations, his

                               17
        Because we now hold that PTO is not a part of an
employee’s salary under the Department of Labor’s salary
basis regulations, we will affirm the District Court’s decision
that Bayada did not make improper deductions from the
plaintiffs’ salaries.

interpretation of it is, under our jurisprudence, controlling
unless ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.’”)
And while the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Coates, the one case
cited by Bayada that post-dates Kisor, refers to informal
Department of Labor interpretative guidance, it does not rely
solely on that informal guidance. 961 F.3d at 1042-48.
       It bears mentioning, however, that the Department’s
interpretation of its regulation conforms with our own. In a
2009 opinion letter, the Department explained that the rule
preventing employers from docking the pay of their salaried
employees does not extend to nonmonetary compensation such
as vacation time or sick leave:
       In no event can any deductions from an exempt
       employee’s salary be made for full or partial day
       absences occasioned by lack of work[.] ...
       Employers can, however, make deductions for
       absences from an exempt employee’s leave bank
       in hourly increments, so long as the employee’s
       salary is not reduced. If exempt employees
       receive their full predetermined salary,
       deductions from a leave bank, whether in full day
       increments or not, do not affect their exempt
       status.
U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Wage & Hour Div., Opinion Letter on
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) (Jan. 16, 2009), 2009 WL
649020, at *1-2.

                               18
       B.     Higgins has forfeited her PMWA claim

        Higgins argues that even if her FLSA claim fails, she is
entitled to relief under the PMWA because “Pennsylvania law
is even more protective than the FLSA” and statutorily
“define[s] wages to include all earnings of an employee,
including fringe benefits, and define[s] promised vacation time
as a fringe benefit.” (Opening Br. at 32). We will not consider
the merits of that argument, however, because Higgins
forfeited it before the District Court and has done so again here
on appeal.

       In its opinion granting summary judgment for Bayada,
the District Court did not separately consider Higgins’s
PMWA claim because it determined that she had not disputed
Bayada’s assertion that the PMWA’s protections were
coextensive with those of the FLSA. (App. at 15 n.11.)
Higgins did reference her PMWA claim in the proceedings
below, but only in a lone footnote in her brief in opposition to
Bayada’s motion for summary judgment. In that footnote,
Higgins asserted that Pennsylvania law provides broader
protection than the FLSA because it defines wages to include
fringe benefits. The footnote also cited a 1985 Superior Court
of Pennsylvania case, Ressler v. Jones Motor Co., 487 A.2d
424, 425 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1985), in support of the proposition
that an employer must compensate a recently separated
employee for earned but unused PTO. Regardless, the District
Court was not required to consider Higgins’s Pennsylvania law
claim because “arguments raised in passing (such as, in a
footnote), but not squarely argued, are considered [forfeited].”
John Wyeth & Bro. Ltd. v. CIGNA Int’l Corp., 119 F.3d 1070,
1076 n.6 (3d Cir. 1997).

                               19
        Likewise, on appeal, Higgins makes only a passing
reference to the PMWA in her opening brief and mentions it
only once in her reply brief. “A passing reference to an issue
... will not suffice to bring that issue before this court.”
Laborers’ Int’l Union of N. Am. v. Foster Wheeler Energy
Corp., 26 F.3d 375, 398 (3d Cir. 1994) (omission in original)
(quotation marks omitted)). Because Higgins failed to develop
her PMWA argument below and has made only passing
reference to it on appeal, we deem that argument forfeited.

III.   Conclusion

      For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the District
Court’s partial summary judgment order.

                             20