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Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock

U.S. Supreme Court · 2026 · Published opinion (PDF)

Summary for general education only—not legal advice. This is not a Workplace Rights Advocacy case result. See Case Results for the firm’s own verdicts and settlements.

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision (Justice Gorsuch) about when workers can stay out of forced private arbitration and bring wage and employment claims in court instead. Angelo Brock is a Flowers Foods distributor in the Denver area: he picks up packaged baked goods from a Colorado warehouse and delivers them to local stores—never leaving the state. He sued Flowers alleging underpayment under federal and state law. Flowers pointed to an arbitration clause in his distribution agreement and asked the court to send the case to arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).

Congress carved out an important exception. FAA §1 says “nothing” in the statute may be used to compel arbitration in disputes over the contracts of employment of certain transportation workers—including any class of workers “engaged in … interstate commerce.” Flowers argued Brock could never qualify unless he personally crossed state lines. The Supreme Court affirmed the Tenth Circuit: a worker who moves goods on an intrastate leg of a longer interstate shipment can still count, even if he never crosses a border. The Court built on Saxon (2022) and Bissonnette (2024) for bakery-route workers. It left open whether a distributor running his own LLC has a “contract of employment” for §1 purposes.

More law updates: Husband v. Target · Morales v. Superior Court · Saberin v. Alation

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