FAA §1 Covers Intrastate Legs of Interstate Journeys Without a Cross-Border or “Vehicle-Interaction” Requirement

1. Introduction

Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock (608 U. S. ___ (2026)) addresses the scope of the Federal Arbitration Act’s (“FAA”) transportation-worker exemption in 9 U. S. C. §1. The case arises from a dispute between Flowers Foods, Inc.—a nationwide producer of packaged baked goods—and Angelo Brock, a Denver-area distributor who picked up Flowers’s products from a Colorado warehouse and delivered them to local stores without leaving the state.

After Brock sued Flowers alleging underpayment under federal and state laws, Flowers sought to compel arbitration based on a distribution agreement containing an arbitration clause. The district court denied the motion; the Tenth Circuit affirmed, concluding that Brock fell within §1 as part of a class of workers “engaged in . . . interstate commerce,” because his intrastate deliveries were a constituent leg of an interstate journey of goods.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari on a single, sharply framed question: whether a worker can qualify as “engaged in . . . interstate commerce” under §1 if he never crosses state lines and never interacts with vehicles that do.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Court (Gorsuch, J., unanimous) affirmed. It held that: a worker who transports goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey can qualify for §1’s exemption without crossing state lines or interacting with vehicles that do.

Rejecting Flowers’s proposed bright-line “cross-or-tag” rule (cross state lines or touch a vehicle that did), the Court found no textual basis for such a limitation. The Court relied on contemporaneous dictionary meanings of “engaged” and “interstate commerce,” the concept of “continuous carriage,” and historical Supreme Court precedent recognizing that intrastate segments can be part of interstate commerce.

3. Analysis

3.1. Precedents Cited

A. The Court’s recent FAA §1 trajectory: resisting narrow constructions

  • New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, 586 U. S. 105 (2019): The Court held that §1’s “contracts of employment” include agreements with independent contractors, not only common-law employees.
    Influence here: Flowers Foods is presented as the “latest in a line” of §1 cases in which the Court has declined to “cabin” the exemption’s reach. The opinion situates Flowers’s position as another attempted narrowing.
  • Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 596 U. S. 450 (2022): The Court held that a cargo loader fell within §1 even though she “did not fly planes or otherwise cross state lines.” The Court also described §1 as covering workers who play a “direct,” “necessary,” and “activ[e]” role in moving goods across borders.
    Influence here: Saxon foreclosed any categorical requirement that a worker personally cross state lines, and supplied the “direct/necessary/active” test the Court reaffirmed—while clarifying that this standard does not imply Flowers’s “vehicle interaction” requirement.
  • Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St., LLC, 601 U. S. 246 (2024): The Court held that a worker need not be employed in the “transportation industry” to fall under §1, so long as the work plays a “direct and necessary role in the free flow of goods across borders.”
    Influence here: Bissonnette reinforces a functional focus on the worker’s role in the movement of goods, not labels like “transportation industry”—supporting the Court’s rejection of Flowers’s formal bright-line rule.

B. Older “engaged in commerce” precedents: intrastate segments can be interstate commerce

  • The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall. 557 (1871): A steamer operating entirely within Michigan was nonetheless “engaged in commerce between the States” because it transported goods destined for other States or brought from outside Michigan. The Court emphasized that using multiple independent intrastate and interstate “agencies” does not change the transaction’s interstate character.
    Influence here: The Daniel Ball is the opinion’s historical anchor: it directly repudiates the intuition that staying within one state (and not directly interfacing with border-crossing vehicles) defeats “interstate commerce” status.
  • Rearick v. Pennsylvania, 203 U. S. 507 (1906): A Pennsylvania salesman who picked up out-of-state shipped goods and delivered them to their final destination was “engaged in interstate commerce,” without any indication he left the state or interacted with vehicles that crossed state lines.
    Influence here: Rearick supports the Court’s key point that intrastate “last-step” delivery can still be “engaged in” interstate commerce where the work completes an interstate shipment.
  • Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412 (1898): A railroad agent moving a package from a train platform to a freight warehouse within a state could, in some circumstances, be part of interstate commerce transportation.
    Influence here: Rhodes helps show that even localized handling can be integral to the interstate transportation process, undercutting a categorical “vehicle-touching” or border-crossing constraint.
  • Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 136 U. S. 114 (1890): The Court recognized intrastate portions of an interstate railroad business as “immediately connected with interstate commerce,” citing The Daniel Ball.
    Influence here: This case reinforces continuity principles—intrastate segments may be “immediately connected” to interstate commerce even if physically local.

C. Limits and context: §1 is not coextensive with the Commerce Clause

  • Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U. S. 105, 119 (2001): The Court emphasized that §1 “exempts from the FAA only contracts of employment of transportation workers.”
    Influence here: The opinion uses Circuit City to clarify that, although Commerce Clause cases illuminate the meaning of “engaged in commerce,” §1 remains narrower in subject matter (transportation workers) and does not automatically reach the full outer bounds of Congress’s commerce power.

D. Lower-court disputes flagged but not resolved

The Court noted additional questions Flowers referenced but did not present for decision:

  • Fli-Lo Falcon, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc., 97 F. 4th 1190, 1197-1198 (CA9 2024) (suggesting §1 may be inapplicable to a contract “between two business entities”).
  • Silva v. Schmidt Baking Distribution, LLC, 162 F. 4th 354, 356-357 (CA2 2025) (holding §1 applicable to certain agreements with “single-employee corporations”).
  • Rittmann v. Amazon.com, Inc., 971 F. 3d 904, 916 (CA9 2020) (focusing on whether a product has reached its “intended destinatio[n]” under an interstate contract).
  • Immediato v. Postmates, Inc., 54 F. 4th 67, 72, 78 (CA1 2022) (intrastate couriers fulfilling in-state takeout orders not engaged in interstate commerce).

Influence here: These citations mark fault lines the Court left open—especially regarding (i) entity-versus-individual contract form, (ii) title passage, and (iii) when an interstate journey ends (“intended destination”).

3.2. Legal Reasoning

A. Text and ordinary meaning at enactment

The Court’s analysis begins with §1’s phrase “workers engaged in . . . interstate commerce.” It consults period sources:

  • Black’s Law Dictionary 661 (3d ed. 1933) for “engage” as “take part in,” or be “employ[ed]” or “involve[d]” in something.
  • Webster’s New International Dictionary 725 (1913) for similar ordinary usage (“To embark in a business; to take a part; to employ or involve one’s self”).
  • Black’s Law Dictionary 1001 defining “interstate commerce” to include transportation “between points in one state and points in another state.”
  • Cyclopedic Law Dictionary 548 (2d ed. 1922) describing “continuous carriage” as interstate commerce “even as to so much of the journey as is within the limits of a single state.”

From these materials, the Court draws the central linguistic point: nothing in the ordinary meaning of “engaged” or “interstate commerce” requires the worker personally to cross a border, nor requires the worker to load/unload or otherwise interact with a border-crossing vehicle.

B. The “cross-or-tag” rule fails as a matter of fit with how interstate transportation works

The Court uses a multi-driver hypothetical to show the arbitrariness of Flowers’s test: splitting a single interstate delivery into segments could make only the driver who crosses the border (or touches a border-crossing vehicle) “interstate,” while functionally identical drivers who perform necessary segments would not. The Court rejects this as inconsistent with the concept of a continuous interstate journey.

C. Historical caselaw as evidence of ordinary meaning—without equating §1 to the Commerce Clause

Flowers argued that The Daniel Ball line of cases interpreted the Commerce Clause, not the FAA. The Court agrees in part and draws a careful boundary: it “do[es] not mean to suggest that the scope of §1 is coterminous with the scope of the Commerce Clause as it was interpreted at the time of the FAA’s adoption.” Still, it treats cases using the same (or very similar) formulations—“engaged in commerce between the States”—as probative of what the statutory language would have conveyed to an ordinary reader at enactment.

D. Reaffirming the “direct, necessary, active” standard—while clarifying what it does not mean

The Court reaffirms Saxon’s requirement of a “direct,” “necessary,” and “activ[e]” role in moving goods across borders. But it clarifies that the standard is functional, not formalistic: a worker may be direct/necessary/active even if the worker’s route is intrastate and even if the worker never touches a border-crossing vehicle.

E. Judicial minimalism: the Court decides only the question presented

Flowers “hint[ed]” at alternative limiting theories: that Brock operated through an “independently operated compan[y]” and that he took title to goods before resale, potentially affecting whether there is a “contract of employment” and whether goods are still in interstate commerce. The Court declines to address these questions because Flowers “does not ask [the Court] to decide their legal significance,” instead staking everything on the rejected bright-line “cross-or-tag” rule.

3.3. Impact

A. Immediate doctrinal impact: a categorical narrowing argument is off the table

After Flowers Foods, litigants cannot defeat §1 solely by showing that the worker (i) stayed intrastate and (ii) did not load/unload or otherwise interact with vehicles that crossed state lines. That removes a simple defense strategy and pushes disputes toward more fact-intensive inquiries about the continuity of the interstate journey and the worker’s functional role in it.

B. Litigation consequences: more contested §1 hearings, fewer compelled arbitrations in distribution/last-mile contexts

Many modern supply chains intentionally segment transportation (long-haul, cross-dock, last-mile). The decision strengthens §1 arguments for workers on intrastate legs when the goods are moving in a continuous interstate stream toward an identified endpoint. Practically, this may:

  • Increase denials of motions to compel arbitration in disputes involving intrastate distributors and delivery drivers tied to interstate supply chains.
  • Shift battlegrounds to unresolved questions the Court flagged (contract form, corporate intermediaries, title transfer, and “intended destination”).
  • Encourage employers to reframe arbitration-enforcement arguments around those open issues rather than geography or vehicle contact.

C. Systemic effects: continued contraction of “bright-line” limitations on §1

The Court explicitly describes this as the “fourth” recent §1 case rejecting efforts to “cabin” the exemption. In combination with New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, and Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St., LLC, Flowers Foods continues a trend: §1 is interpreted by function and ordinary meaning, not by easy categorical cutoffs.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • FAA (Federal Arbitration Act): A federal statute that generally requires courts to enforce valid agreements to arbitrate disputes.
  • §1 exemption: A carve-out providing that “nothing” in the FAA compels arbitration for “contracts of employment” of certain transportation-related workers, including “any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”
  • “Engaged in . . . interstate commerce” (in §1): A functional concept focusing on whether the worker plays a direct and necessary role in moving goods across state or national borders—not merely whether the worker personally crosses a border.
  • “Continuous carriage” / continuous journey: A shipment can be interstate even if parts of its physical movement happen wholly within one state, so long as those parts are segments of a broader interstate movement from origin to destination.
  • Commerce Clause vs. FAA §1: Commerce Clause cases interpret constitutional power; §1 is a statutory exemption limited to “transportation workers.” The Court uses older Commerce Clause-era cases as evidence of language meaning, not to equate §1 with maximum constitutional breadth.

5. Conclusion

Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock establishes a clear rule: FAA §1 does not require a transportation worker to cross state lines—or to “tag” a border-crossing vehicle—to be “engaged in . . . interstate commerce.” When a worker transports goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey, the worker may fall within §1’s exemption, provided the role is direct, necessary, and active in the interstate movement of goods.

Equally important, the Court’s restraint signals what remains open for future development: disputes will likely pivot to questions about the existence of a “contract of employment” in entity-to-entity arrangements, the legal relevance of title transfer, and how to identify a shipment’s “intended destinatio[n].” In the broader legal landscape, Flowers Foods continues the Court’s modern pattern of reading §1 in a practical, ordinary-meaning way that resists simplistic narrowing rules—and will shape arbitration enforcement across contemporary, segmented logistics networks.