In Rodriguez v. Pure Beauty Farms, Inc., the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit considered whether two employees of a commercial nursery-farming operation, who maintained and cared for the farm's plants at a separate company's location, were exempt agricultural employees under the FLSA. A key litigated issue was whether the employees worked in "secondary agriculture" under the FLSA, and therefore were not entitled to payment of overtime.

Pure Beauty Farms (the Farms), a commercial nursery-farming operation, sells its plants out of Home Depot locations. The Farms' plants are kept at Home Depot stores, but are cared for by employees of the Farms at those sites. If the plants sell, Home Depot pays the Farms for the plants. Any plants that do not sell are returned to the Farms.

The plaintiffs worked for the Farms at Home Depot, making sure the Farms' plants remained in sellable condition until they were purchased. As part of their duties, the plaintiffs watered and otherwise tended to the plants, kept the plant staging areas clean, sent unsold plants back to the Farms and asked for additional plants. They did not tend to any plants owned by other companies. The Farms paid the plaintiffs straight time wages for any hours worked over 40 in a week.

The plaintiffs sued the Farms and its owner, claiming they were entitled to overtime wages under the FLSA. The district court held that the plaintiffs were exempt from the FLSA's overtime provisions as agricultural workers. The plaintiffs appealed.

The Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion on January 9, 2013, affirming the district court's holding that the plaintiffs were agricultural workers exempt from the FLSA's overtime provisions.

Employees may be exempt from the FLSA's overtime provisions if they are employed in either primary or secondary agriculture. Primary agriculture includes specific activities, such as cultivation or tillage of the soil. The parties did not dispute that the plaintiffs were not involved in primary agriculture.

Secondary agriculture is defined as practices performed:

The court found the plaintiffs qualified as farmers for purposes of the exemption, as the definition of farmer includes:

The plaintiffs also performed practices in connection with the farmer's farming operations, as they maintained only the Farms' plants, and not any other company's plants.

As to the third prong of the secondary agriculture definition, a practice performed in connection with farming operations may be an incident to or in conjunction with those operations if it:

When the practice involves work on an agricultural commodity (in this case, the plants themselves), the courts look at the following factors to determine whether the practice amounts to a separate business:

In addition, DOL regulations on nursery employees provide that those employees who work in sorting, grading and trimming the stock and packing it for shipment are employed in agriculture if:

In this case, the court found the plaintiffs' work was an incident to or in conjunction with the Farms' farming operations because:

The court dismissed the plaintiffs' argument that the FLSA exemption did not apply because the Farms used independent contractors to transport its plants to Home Depot stores, as that did not alter either the Farms' status as a farmer or the plaintiffs' work for the Farms once the plants were delivered. The court also dismissed the plaintiffs' argument that they were engaged in a separate business enterprise of selling plants, as:

The Eleventh Circuit's decision in Rodriguez v. Pure Beauty Farms, Inc. helps to interpret the secondary agriculture exemption under the FLSA. Employers in the Eleventh Circuit that operate similar businesses should be aware that their employees may be exempt from the FLSA's overtime provisions even if they do not work on the business' premises or on the farm itself.