There have been a great many intern cases recently, cases testing whether interns crossed the line into being statutory employees and therefore covered by the FLSA. I have blogged about these kinds of cases and have specifically blogged about beauty school cases. The Ninth Circuit has just affirmed a lower federal court’s dismissal of a lawsuit from three beauty school students, who allege they were employees while they studied for their degrees. The case is entitled Benjamin, et al v. B & H Education and issued from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Hairdresser cutting young woman's hairApplying the test enunciated in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc., the Court agreed with the lower court’s conclusion that the students had not shown that the educational benefit they had received from attending B&H Education Inc.’s Marinello Schools of Beauty was not superseded by the amount of unpaid “work” that they performed. The Court stated that the “application of the Glatt factors establishes that students were the primary beneficiaries of their labors. Their participation in Marinello’s clinic provided them with the hands-on training they needed to sit for the state licensing exams.”

The Court also found that even if another, more restrictive test, i.e. the DOL factors, was applied, the students would still not be employees. The Court stated that even if it applied these DOL factors, “we view the training provided to plaintiffs to be in an educational environment, because state law requires students to clock hundreds of hours of instruction and practical training in order to qualify for taking the licensing exams.”

The issue was that as part of their educational training, the students at the school were expected to practice providing cosmetology services and, on occasion, some customers received these services. That gave the foundation for the students to allege that they were really “employees.” The Court was not convinced, finding that “as the district court noted in this case, schools typically exercise significant control over their students, but that does not make them employers.”

The Takeaway

There is a tension between the “moment” actual work may get performed and whether that alleged work is too integrally connected to the education to be called “work.”

The trick is knowing where that line gets crossed…