Wage & Hour Class And Collective Actions I. Executive Summary
Once again in 2024, as has been the case for several years, litigation against employers alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and/or related state law wage & hour laws continued to be an area of intense focus for plaintiffs’ attorneys. The plaintiffs’ bar in 2024 filed more wage and hour class and collective actions against companies than any other type of complex litigation, resulting in outsized importance for this area of substantive law. The chart below shows all FLSA filings by state in 2024.
To conditionally certify a collective action under the FLSA, plaintiffs must provide some evidence to support their claim that they are similarly-situated to the other potential members of the proposed collective action. This evidence, known as a “modest factual showing” and universally recognized as a low threshold to meet, often takes the form of affidavits or declarations from the plaintiffs and other employees, as well as other evidence such as time or payroll records. If the plaintiffs can make this modest factual showing, the court will conditionally certify the collective action, allowing the plaintiffs to send notice to other potentially similarly-situated employees and invite them to join the collective action by filing opt-in consent forms with the court per 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). The second stage of the collective action certification process occurs after a group of potential collective action members join the action. At this stage, and after discovery is completed, the court conducts a more thorough analysis of the plaintiffs’ claims and the evidence they have provided to determine whether the plaintiffs are
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© Duane Morris LLP 2025
Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2025
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