What’s Up With Glatt?!: The FLSA’s Primary Beneficiary Standard in Hindsight

Abstract

This paper examines internship compensation cases under the FLSA decided after Glatt v. Fox Searchlight. In Glatt, a 2015 case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was thought to have fundamentally changed the nature of unpaid internships when it ruled that Department of Labor guidelines for determining what, if anything, an intern should be paid shall be replaced by an inquiry focused on which party, the employee or the intern, benefits more from the relationship. Analysis concludes that the new “primary beneficiary” standard adopted by the Second Circuit resulted in generally favorable outcomes for employers in these cases and failed to adequately protect interns due to far looser consideration by courts of factors significantly similar to the Department of Labor’s original guidelines as well as a disproportionate emphasis on the existence of some inherent educational component. The resulting, detrimental effects on internship applications, participation, and outcomes are additionally explored.