Business owners, officers, and managers, this is why you need to pay attention to wage and hour issues. 

Tow truck driver Marquis Mariscal sued JLS Towing, alleging the company misclassified him and other drivers as independent contractors and paid them a flat rate per vehicle towed, no matter how many hours they worked. No overtime, ever, even past 40 hours a week. 

He not only sued the company, but also its president, Summer Settle, personally, claiming she directed the company's operations, set schedules, made hiring and firing calls, and controlled how drivers got paid.

In wage and hour cases, the corporate shell is not a liability force field. The Fair Labor Standards Act doesn't care what your state's business code says. The FLSA defines "employer" to include any person acting in the interest of an employer, and courts have long held that a corporate officer with operational control over the workforce can be personally liable, jointly and severally, right alongside the company.

Liability is not absolute, and depends on the balancing of these four factors: 

1. Power to hire and fire. Not just a vote at the board table, but the actual authority to bring someone on or let them go.

2. Control over schedules and working conditions. Did this person set hours, assign shifts, or supervise day-to-day work?

3. Control over pay. Did they decide the rate, the method, or whether overtime got paid at all?

4. Maintenance of employment records. Someone has to keep the books on hours and pay. If it's you, that's evidence of control.

Mariscal alleged Settle checked every one of those boxes. That was enough to survive dismissal.

Being a co-owner who occasionally weighs in isn't enough on its own. Someone actually has to run the operation for liability to trigger. If you set the pay structure, sign off on schedules, and decide who gets hired or fired, an LLC or other corporate form won't save you when the overtime math goes wrong.

Titles don't create liability. Control does, and control doesn't come with a shield. If compliance isn't reason enough to get your wage and hour house in order, personal liability should be.

     

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The EEOC has lost right to claim that it's for "equal employment opportunity."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exists to investigate workplace discrimination. Yet, on August 18, it signed a settlement promising never to do that again, for one group of employers, forever.

The employer is the Christian Employers Alliance. CEA sued the EEOC challenging its guidance treating gender identity discrimination as sex discrimination under Title VII. Instead of litigating it, the agency gave CEA everything it asked for.

CEA is already selling it that way. Its membership page reads "Join CEA and stop being exposed," under a banner promising members are "Protected the Moment You're In." Karla Gilbride, EEOC general counsel under the Biden administration and now at the ACLU, named it for what it is: "It's like they're selling an insurance policy against EEOC investigations."

The EEOC, however, already has a real process for religious objections: a case-by-case defense the agency weighs against the facts. This settlement skips that. Investigators can't open a file at all if the employer is a member. Gilbride called that carve-out "unprecedented." It creates a license for these employers to discriminate against a class of their employees. That should trouble everyone, no matter your religion or beliefs.

So what do you actually take from this settlement?

1. Membership isn't immunity from the courthouse. This blocks EEOC charges and investigations. It does nothing to a state discrimination claim or an employee's own lawsuit under Bostock, the Supreme Court precedent that defines transgender discrimination as sex discrimination. The case doesn't vanish — it shows up somewhere else, just without the EEOC doing the legwork for the plaintiff.

2. An association card is not a compliance policy. If "we joined this group" is your entire defense, you're betting on a settlement surviving a legal challenge to whether an agency can even do this.

3. Agency policy isn't law, and it turns over. This policy and the settlement it furthers exists because of who runs the EEOC right now. It remains to be seen if this settlement will survive future administrations or legal scrutiny.

The EEOC is supposed to police discrimination, not pre-clear it for a membership fee. When the enforcer starts selling exemptions from itself, it isn't just picking a side. It's forgetting the job it was hired to do. Call that religious liberty if you want. Just don't call it equal.

     

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