His truck never crosses a state line – so why can't the company arbitrate?
The Supreme Court just made it harder for employers to force certain delivery workers into arbitration instead of open court.
In a unanimous ruling on May 28, 2026, the justices decided that a delivery worker who never leaves his home state can still slip free of an arbitration clause, as long as his route is one leg of a longer interstate trip.
The dispute pitted Flowers Foods, one of the country's largest makers of packaged baked goods, against Angelo Brock, a franchisee who distributes its products around Denver. Brock collects goods from a Colorado warehouse and drops them at local stores, never crossing a state line.
In 2022, Brock sued the company, saying it had underpaid him and other distributors under a mix of federal and state laws. Flowers wanted the fight settled in private arbitration instead of court, pointing to a distribution agreement Brock had signed. The Federal Arbitration Act usually requires judges to enforce those deals.
There is a catch, though. The law carves out an exemption for certain transportation workers engaged in interstate commerce. The justices had to decide whether Brock fit that description, given that his truck stays inside Colorado.
They concluded that he could. Writing for the Court, Justice Gorsuch held that a worker moving goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey can qualify for the exemption without crossing state lines or interacting with vehicles that do. The opinion reached back to the ordinary meaning of the law's words around the time it was passed in 1925, and to a string of older cases, including one from more than 150 years ago about a steamer that stayed within Michigan yet still counted as part of commerce between the states.
Flowers had pressed for a clean, simple rule: no exemption unless a worker crosses state lines or handles a vehicle that does. The Court turned that down, finding nothing in the law's text to support it.
So, what does this mean for HR? Arbitration clauses sit in countless worker and contractor agreements, and employers lean on them to keep disputes quiet and out of open court. This decision confirms the transportation-worker exemption stretches further than many assumed. An employee or contractor who never leaves the state can still land outside an arbitration agreement if their work plays a direct, necessary, and active part in moving goods across borders.
The justices were careful to leave plenty unresolved. Flowers had hinted that Brock might fall outside the exemption anyway, because the company deals with a separate business he owns, and because he buys and takes title to the goods before reselling them. But Flowers never asked the Court to rule on those points, so it did not. That sets up future battles over how the exemption applies to franchisees and independent contractors.
For now, the takeaway for employers is simple: an arbitration clause in a distribution or driver agreement is not a guarantee. If the work feeds an interstate supply chain, the courthouse door may stay open. The Tenth Circuit's ruling stands.
