I’ve written on this site about how a 1925 statute meant to help merchants settle commercial disputes turned into the tool that pushes ordinary people out of court. That piece wasn’t optimistic. The trend has run one way for a long time.
So it’s worth noting when it runs the other way.
On May 28, 2026, in Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock, a unanimous Supreme Court held that a delivery driver doesn’t have to cross state lines — or even work with a vehicle that does — to qualify as a “transportation worker” exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act. Justice Gorsuch wrote for the Court. The case came up from the Tenth Circuit, and the Court affirmed the courts below.
Drivers have spent a decade getting routed into individual arbitration. This is real, good news for them.
The exemption everyone forgets exists
The Federal Arbitration Act, passed in 1925, makes courts enforce arbitration agreements. Everybody knows that part.
Fewer people know the FAA has always carved a group of workers out of its reach. There’s a residual clause in Section 1 exempting “workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” It’s old, it’s in the original statute, and for most of the FAA’s life it didn’t matter much, because nobody was putting arbitration clauses in every employment agreement yet.
That changed. Once arbitration clauses showed up in nearly every employment and independent-contractor agreement, the Section 1 exemption became one of the few doors left open, and the fights over how wide it is got louder.
The question kept coming back: how much interstate movement does a worker need?
The argument the Court threw out
Angelo Brock was a Denver-based delivery franchisee for Flowers Foods, a big baked-goods company. He filed a putative class and collective action in Colorado federal court claiming he was underpaid under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Flowers Foods moved to compel arbitration.
The company’s argument had been picking up steam. Brock drove locally. His routes stayed inside Colorado. He never personally carried anything across a state line. Whatever the exemption covers, the company said, it shouldn’t cover a driver whose own work never leaves the state.
The district court didn’t buy it and denied the motion. The Tenth Circuit affirmed. Then the Supreme Court affirmed, unanimously, finding nothing in the statute “requiring crossing state lines or interacting with a vehicle that does so.”
Here’s the holding. Workers engaged in the intrastate delivery of goods destined for or arriving from interstate commerce fall within the exemption. What counts is the trip the goods are on, not the map of the driver’s own leg of it.
Why this is bigger than it sounds
The label “last-mile driver” sells this short.
The last mile is where a huge share of the modern economy’s labor sits now. Goods cross the country in bulk, then get delivered locally by drivers who are often classified as independent contractors, often paid in ways that lead to wage disputes, and — until now — often held to arbitration clauses on the theory that their own routes never left the state.
That theory’s dead. And the reasoning isn’t just about bread trucks. Any worker moving goods locally as part of a longer interstate trip has a strong argument under this decision.
Here’s why it matters in real life. Arbitration clauses in this sector are individual by design, and they come paired with class-action waivers. Send a driver with a $9,000 wage claim to individual arbitration and, realistically, he has no remedy. The case costs more to bring than it can win. The same claim, as part of a collective action against a national employer, is a case somebody actually litigates. So whether the FAA applies isn’t a procedural technicality. For these workers it’s often the difference between a claim and no claim.
What this doesn’t do
A good decision is easy to read too much into. So here’s where it stops.
It doesn’t make the arbitration agreement void. It holds that the FAA doesn’t compel arbitration of these claims. State arbitration law may still apply, and employers will fight over that. The FAA is the strongest tool for forcing arbitration. It isn’t the only one.
It doesn’t reach past transportation. The Section 1 exemption is limited to transportation workers. A retail employee, a nurse, or a software developer with an arbitration clause gets nothing from this decision.
It doesn’t settle every edge. “Engaged in interstate commerce” clearly isn’t about state lines anymore, but the outer edges will be litigated for years. How thin can the connection to interstate movement get? What about goods made and sold entirely in-state? What about workers who handle goods but don’t transport them?
And it doesn’t touch classification. Brock was a franchisee. Whether workers in these setups are employees or independent contractors is a separate question, it often decides the case, and this decision says nothing about it.
The bigger point
One case isn’t a trend. One unanimous decision doesn’t undo forty years of arbitration law, and the problems I’ve written about — class-action waivers, clauses nobody reads, the math that makes small claims not worth bringing one at a time — are all still there.
But look at what the Court actually did. It read the statute, found no requirement that a worker personally cross a state line, and refused to add one. That’s just reading a statute as written. It came out for the workers because the text does.
Hang onto that. The arbitration system that’s grown up over the last four decades was built mostly through interpretation — of a 1925 statute whose drafters were thinking about merchants, not consumers or gig drivers. Interpretation built it up. Interpretation can rein it in. And the limits live in the same place: the words Congress actually passed.
If you’re a delivery driver or transportation worker and you’ve been told your wage claim has to go to arbitration, the answer may have changed. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Source: Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock (U.S. May 28, 2026) (Gorsuch, J.). This article is general commentary on a published decision, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Whether the exemption applies to any particular worker depends on facts specific to that person’s work and agreement. No outcome is promised or implied.