Post–Loper Bright Validation of DOL’s 2013 Third-Party Home-Care Overtime Rule and No Standing to Challenge Companionship Definition

I. Introduction

In U.S. Dep't of Labor v. Americare Healthcare Services, Inc.; Dilli Adhikari (6th Cir. Apr. 1, 2026), the Sixth Circuit addressed whether the Department of Labor’s 2013 regulations governing home-care overtime remain enforceable after the Supreme Court’s rejection of Chevron-style implied deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The Department brought an FLSA enforcement action alleging that Americare, an Ohio home-care agency, and its owner failed to pay overtime to live-in home-care workers between 2018 and 2021.

The pivotal legal fight did not concern whether employees worked overtime, but whether Americare could claim statutory exemptions that remove certain domestic-service workers from the FLSA’s overtime requirements—specifically:

  • the “Companionship Services Exemption”, 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(15), and
  • the “Live-In Exemption”, 29 U.S.C. § 213(b)(21).

Americare argued that the 2013 Third-Party Regulation (which bars third-party employers from using either exemption) is invalid under the APA; it also sought to attack the regulation narrowing the Companionship Services Definition, 29 C.F.R. § 552.6. The district court ruled for DOL; Americare appealed the regulation-validity and standing rulings.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding:

  1. The 2013 Third-Party Regulation, 29 C.F.R. § 552.109(a), (c), is a valid exercise of the Secretary of Labor’s expressly delegated authority under the FLSA, as analyzed through Loper Bright’s express-delegation framework.
  2. Americare and Adhikari lack Article III standing to challenge the Companionship Services Definition, because once the third-party bar applies, the narrowed definition cannot be the cause of their injury.

Judge Bush concurred in the judgment and joined most of the majority opinion, but disagreed with the majority’s path in Section III.A regarding how the agency’s authority reaches the live-in exemption.

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

1. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024): the new interpretive baseline

The opinion treats Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), as the controlling methodology for reviewing agency action under the APA:

  • Courts must determine statutory meaning using “traditional tools of statutory construction” and the statute’s “single, best meaning.”
  • But Loper Bright preserves a distinct category: where Congress expressly delegates authority to an agency to give content to statutory terms, courts apply a three-step inquiry: constitutionality of the delegation, boundaries of delegated authority, and reasoned decisionmaking within those boundaries.

The Sixth Circuit emphasized Loper Bright’s explicit recognition that the FLSA’s companionship exemption is a paradigmatic express delegation, noting the Supreme Court’s footnote highlighting the phrase “as such terms are defined and delimited by regulations of the Secretary.”

2. Pickens v. Hamilton-Ryker IT Sols., LLC (2025): Sixth Circuit’s post–Loper Bright express-delegation template

The majority relied heavily on Pickens v. Hamilton-Ryker IT Sols., LLC, 133 F.4th 575 (6th Cir. 2025), which applied the express-delegation framework to FLSA § 213(a)(1) (“executive, administrative, or professional” employees “as such terms are defined and delimited” by the Secretary). Pickens supplied two key moves used here:

  • “Define” = to “state precisely” what a term means.
  • “Delimit” = to “fix or mark boundaries or limits.”

This definitional work mattered because Americare’s core claim was that the Secretary cannot draw lines based on employer identity (third-party agencies) rather than employee duties or living arrangement.

3. Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke (2007): binding on third-party inclusion/exclusion as a “detail”

The court treated Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke, 551 U.S. 158 (2007), as decisive on the key statutory point: under § 213(a)(15), whether third-party employment is within the exemption is one of the “details” the Department may decide. The majority quoted Coke’s central line:

“Whether to include workers paid by third parties within the scope of the definitions is one of those details.”

Americare argued that Coke was effectively “Chevron-based” and undermined by Loper Bright. The Sixth Circuit rejected that framing for two reasons:

  • Loper Bright states it does not disturb prior statutory holdings merely because they used the Chevron framework, invoking statutory stare decisis.
  • More importantly, the Sixth Circuit read Coke as rooted in express delegation, which Loper Bright preserved.

4. Home Care Ass'n of Am. v. Weil (D.C. Cir. 2015): persuasive support for reasonableness and standing

The court drew two forms of support from Home Care Ass'n of Am. v. Weil, 799 F.3d 1084 (D.C. Cir. 2015) [Home Care Association]:

  • Merits: the D.C. Circuit found the 2013 third-party rule “entirely reasonable” given industry transformation.
  • Standing: once third-party employers cannot use the companionship exemption at all, they have no injury traceable to the narrowed definition of companionship services.

Although Home Care Association arose during the Chevron era, the Sixth Circuit reasoned that reasonableness review remains the relevant lens for express-delegation actions under the APA.

5. Change-in-position review: F.C.C. v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. and F.C.C. v. Prometheus Radio Project

The court used F.C.C. v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502 (2009), to define how agencies may change course: the APA does not impose a heightened standard merely because the agency changed its policy; it must show awareness of the change and provide good reasons, not prove the new policy is “better” than the old one.

It also invoked F.C.C. v. Prometheus Radio Project, 592 U.S. 414 (2021), via Pickens, for the proposition that the agency must be “reasonable and reasonably explained.”

6. Additional interpretive/structural precedents

  • Batterton v. Francis, 432 U.S. 416 (1977): cited by Loper Bright for the proposition that some statutes authorize agency discretion.
  • Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass'ns, 531 U.S. 457 (2001): “intelligible principle” requirement for delegation.
  • Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337 (1997): text and context in statutory interpretation.
  • Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214 (2008), and Chickasaw Nation v. U.S., 534 U.S. 84 (2001): give effect to enacted text and each word if possible.
  • Daunt v. Benson, 956 F.3d 396 (6th Cir. 2020), Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016), and Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U.S. 149 (2014): standing elements.

7. Emerging inter-circuit alignment: Walsh v. WiCare Home Care Agency, LLC

The Sixth Circuit noted the Third Circuit’s recent decision in Walsh v. WiCare Home Care Agency, LLC, 2026 WL 36153 (3d Cir. Jan. 6 2026), which likewise upheld exclusion of third-party employers as a lawful use of expressly delegated authority. This citation signals a growing post–Loper Bright consensus around the continuing force of the home-care third-party rule.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. Framing the question as an express-delegation case, not an implied-deference case

The court’s first decisive move was to categorize § 213(a)(15) as an express delegation, not a mere ambiguity that once triggered Chevron. Americare conceded this for the companionship exemption, and Coke plus Loper Bright made that conclusion unavoidable.

2. Extending regulatory authority to the Live-In Exemption: majority vs concurrence

The legally novel and most contestable piece of the majority opinion is its explanation for why the Department’s third-party exclusion can also apply to the Live-In Exemption, which lacks the same “defined and delimited” language.

  • Majority’s route: because both exemptions overlap in coverage for “live-in companionship” workers and both turn on “domestic service,” the delegation in § 213(a)(15) extends to § 213(b)(21) insofar as they overlap, creating a “clear textual link” through the repeated statutory term “domestic service.”
  • Judge Bush’s concurrence: he rejected the majority’s “overlap” theory as lacking a textual hook. He would instead apply the Department’s definition/delimitation of “domestic service employment” (made under § 213(a)(15)) consistently across the statute wherever “domestic service” appears, including § 213(b)(21). On his view, the correct path is simpler—but he also flagged broader doubts about Coke and about whether the third-party exclusion truly “delimits” a term versus impermissibly limiting the exemption itself.

Practically, both approaches in this case supported the same bottom line: Coke controls, and the third-party exclusion stands. But the split highlights a likely future battleground: whether applying § 213(a)(15)’s delegated definitional power to other FLSA exemptions is best justified as (a) limited overlap authority (majority) or (b) consistent usage of a defined statutory term across provisions (concurrence).

3. Applying the Loper Bright three-step inquiry

(a) Constitutionality

Using Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass'ns and Pickens, the court found the delegation constitutional: directing the Secretary to “define and delimit” provides an intelligible principle—indeed, a specific one.

(b) Boundaries of authority

The court rejected Americare’s claim that the Secretary may only classify based on employees rather than employers. The court treated Coke as settling that “third-party employment” is a permissible “detail” within the Secretary’s delegated authority to define/delimit “domestic service employment” and “companionship services.”

(c) Reasoned decisionmaking within those boundaries

The court upheld the Department’s explanation for changing course from the 1975 approach (which allowed third-party employers to claim the exemptions) to the 2013 rule (which barred them). Relying on F.C.C. v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., the court held that the APA does not require heightened review for policy reversal; it requires awareness of the change and good reasons.

The Department’s reason—home care’s “dramatic transformation” driven by expanded Medicare/Medicaid home-care funding and the shift away from institutional care—was treated as a rational, evidence-based justification for narrowing exemptions to preserve FLSA protections in a changed labor market.

4. Standing: why the companionship definition challenge could not proceed

The court held Americare lacked standing to contest the narrowed Companionship Services Definition, because its injury (overtime liability) was not “fairly traceable” to that definition once the 2013 third-party rule independently barred Americare from using the companionship exemption at all. This followed Home Care Association’s standing logic: when a party cannot access an exemption as a threshold matter, refinements to the exemption’s internal definition do not cause the party’s legal injury.

C. Impact

1. Post–Loper Bright stability for long-standing DOL home-care rules

The decision supplies a clear roadmap for sustaining major DOL regulations after Loper Bright: anchor validity in express delegation, then assess whether the agency acted within defined boundaries with reasoned explanation. For home-care litigation, the ruling strengthens the enforceability of 29 C.F.R. § 552.109 in the Sixth Circuit.

2. Litigation narrowing: standing barrier to attacking the companionship definition

The standing holding is consequential in practice. Third-party home-care agencies (the most frequent challengers of these rules) may be unable to litigate the contours of the companionship definition in federal court if the third-party bar remains valid, because they cannot show traceability/redressability as to that specific definitional change.

3. Pressure on business models relying on family-member caregiving

Americare’s model—hiring family members to provide Medicaid-waiver home care—highlights a policy tension: culturally preferred family caregiving may still be delivered through a third-party agency that handles payroll and compliance. After this decision, such agencies remain firmly subject to overtime requirements even when they claim they cannot “unilaterally” manage hours below 40 due to client/family needs.

4. Doctrinal fault line preserved by the concurrence

Judge Bush’s concurrence, while agreeing that Coke decides the case, signals possible future challenges:

  • whether third-party exclusion truly “delimits” delegated terms or instead impermissibly narrows exemptions (a concern he develops at length), and
  • whether general rulemaking clauses like § 29(b) confer legislative rulemaking authority (he argues they do not, though the majority did not reach that issue).

These concerns may be leveraged by future litigants attempting to limit agencies’ ability to transform exemptions via rulemaking, particularly under a more exacting post–Loper Bright view of delegation boundaries.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • FLSA exemptions: special statutory carve-outs that remove certain workers from minimum wage and/or overtime protections.
  • Express delegation: when Congress explicitly tells an agency to define key statutory terms (here, “as such terms are defined and delimited by regulations of the Secretary”), courts treat the agency as having authorized discretion within that assignment.
  • “Define” vs “delimit”: to “define” is to say what a term means; to “delimit” is to set its boundaries—what is in and what is out.
  • APA “arbitrary and capricious” review: courts check whether the agency gave a rational explanation grounded in the record and within statutory limits; they do not decide whether the policy is the best one.
  • Standing: a threshold constitutional requirement. Even if a rule might be unlawful, a challenger must show the rule causes their concrete injury and that a court order would likely fix it.

V. Conclusion

The Sixth Circuit’s decision reinforces that express delegations survive—and matter more—after Loper Bright. Relying on Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke and its own post–Loper Bright framework in Pickens v. Hamilton-Ryker IT Sols., LLC, the court upheld the Department of Labor’s authority to bar third-party home-care employers from invoking the companionship and live-in exemptions, and it foreclosed a collateral definitional challenge for lack of standing. The ruling solidifies overtime coverage for many home-care workers in the Sixth Circuit while spotlighting an ongoing interpretive debate—captured by the concurrence—about how far “define and delimit” authority can reach and how strictly courts should police the boundary between defining terms and rewriting exemptions.