On October 6, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) denied certiorari for Department of Labor v. Nursing Home Care Management Inc.—an opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit holding that the Fair Labor Standards Act requires compensation for travel time between job sites. As a result, Nursing Home Care Management remains binding within Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and the opinion may serve as a bellwether for similar cases in other jurisdictions.
In Nursing Home Care Management, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) brought suit against a home healthcare agency for alleged failures to pay employees for travel time between clients’ homes. The DOL relied on the “continuous workday doctrine,” which provides that time spent traveling as part of an employee’s principal activities—such as moving between job sites during the workday—must be treated as hours worked.
The employer argued that such travel time was not compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act because it was not work integral to the employees’ caregiving duties and, at times, occurred before or after breaks. The Third Circuit rejected those arguments, holding that travel between patients’ homes is “integral and indispensable” to home healthcare work and thus is a principal job activity. The court also emphasized that employees could not use this time for personal purposes and, given the nature of their work, had to travel in order to reach their next job site.
The ruling in Nursing Home Care Management—and SCOTUS’s refusal to review it—reinforces the DOL’s long-standing interpretation of the FLSA: travel time is compensable when it is an integral and indispensable part of an employee’s principal job duties.
Key Takeaways for Employers
- Compensable travel: Under the FLSA, employees must be paid for travel time between job sites during the workday. Such time also counts toward the 40-hour weekly threshold for overtime. However, ordinary commuting—to and from home or a second job, or for personal errands—remains non-compensable.
- Beyond home care: Although this case arose in the home healthcare context, the same principle applies to employees in other industries who routinely travel between worksites.
- Compliance measures: Employers should implement reliable systems to track and record work-related travel time accurately to ensure compliance with the FLSA and minimize potential liability, with a special focus on travel time incurred between the start and end of an employee’s work shift.
For more information about complying with the FLSA, please contact the authors of this article or any other attorney in Venable’s Labor and Employment Group.