The state Supreme Court delivered a mixed ruling to four truck drivers on Monday, finding that two of them qualified for overtime pay under state wage rules because they never left Colorado and, therefore, were not interstate drivers.

The remaining two, however, fell under an exemption to the rules that barred them from receiving overtime pay, even though they had taken just one work trip apiece across state lines.

Although the decision resolved a key split in legal interpretation within the state’s Court of Appeals, the effect is relatively narrow. The four truck drivers sued their former employer, JP Trucking, Inc., over rules that were in place in 2015. Colorado has since updated its wage regulations to align with the federal government’s, eliminating any further controversy about the meaning of “interstate driver.”

Plaintiffs Leonel Gomez, Francisco Gonzalez, Ebarardo Sanchez and Nathan Abbott worked for Gypsum-based JP Trucking. They alleged that the company had failed to comply with the Federal Labor Standards Act, as well as Colorado’s wage laws by denying them time-and-a-half pay for overtime work. Gonzalez and Abbott drove out of state one time each, while Gomez and Sanchez drove entirely within Colorado.

Courts have recognized the meaning of “interstate driver” under federal law to include workers who might not cross state lines, but still work in interstate commerce. In contrast, an advisory bulletin from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment around the time the plaintiffs went to work for JP Trucking explained that the state classified interstate drivers as those “whose work takes them across state lines.”

Eagle County District Court Judge Russell H. Granger determined in 2019 that the men were, in fact, exempt from overtime pay under federal law, whose goal was to promote highway safety by deterring commercial drivers from seeking work in excess of 40 hours a week.

However, the plaintiffs were not exempt from overtime under state law’s interpretation of “interstate driver.” Granger noted that even though two of the plaintiffs had driven across state lines, the travel was not substantial enough to put them in the interstate category.

A three-judge panel for the state’s Court of Appeals subsequently evaluated Granger’s analysis. On the hand one was the federal understanding of “interstate driver” that implicated interstate commerce, but the panel also weighed a competing interpretation in another Court of Appeals case, Brunson v. Colorado Cab Company. In that decision, a different Court of Appeals panel ruled that a shuttle driver working out of Denver International Airport was not an interstate driver under state wage regulations because he did not cross state lines.

Faced with those two interpretations of the term “interstate driver,” the appellate panel in the JP Trucking case sided with the federal definition and reversed Granger’s ruling.

“(O)ur supreme court instructs that where a state law is patterned after a federal law or designed to implement its policies, federal courts’ constructions ‘should be accorded great weight’,” wrote Judge Rebecca R. Freyre in the November 2020 opinion.

The Supreme Court, however, believed the panel was wrong to turn to the federal courts first, given that the federal wage law’s focus on interstate commerce was not how Colorado’s labor department framed the state’s understanding of interstate drivers. Consequently, the Supreme Court believed the Brunson panel had the correct interpretation of the law after all.

“If the term means what JP Trucking says it means (drivers engaged in the transportation of goods in interstate commerce), then, yes, both exemptions exclude the same drivers” from receiving overtime pay, wrote Justice Carlos A. Samour Jr. in the May 16 opinion. “But if the term means what the truck drivers say it means (drivers who cross state lines predominantly), then, no, the exemptions do not exclude the same drivers.”

While the court outright rejected JP Trucking’s definition, it did not wholly agree with Granger and the truck drivers that the number of times a driver crossed state lines matters. Instead, the two plaintiffs who had each crossed one time were, strictly speaking, interstate drivers.

“And applying such a standard would be unworkable,” Samour added. “Would five out-of-state work trips qualify as predominant? Would ten? Would it depend on the percentage of work trips that are out-of-state?”

Because the two plaintiffs who never left Colorado for their jobs were not interstate drivers, the Supreme Court returned the case to the Court of Appeals to consider their damages claims.

The case is Gomez et al. v. JP Trucking, Inc.