A federal judge last week declined to dismiss 39 nursing employees’ claims for compensation against a Greenwood Village-based company for its alleged violations of state and federal law.

U.S. Nursing Corporation employs health care professionals to cross the picket lines during strikes. During a three-day strike in October 2023 at Kaiser Permanente facilities, USN sent the plaintiffs to work in California. However, the company allegedly failed to compensate the plaintiffs in accordance with the law and did not immediately pay them upon discharge, as California requires.

USN moved to dismiss the lawsuit in Colorado’s federal court, arguing the plaintiffs failed to sufficiently allege how the company violated each of their rights individually.

“No Plaintiff alleges that they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, and, if so, by how much,” wrote lawyers for USN. “USN has no way of knowing which Plaintiff alleges underpayment based on which theory. Without individual facts, no individual Plaintiff states a plausible claim.”

The plaintiffs responded that they had described receiving partial onboarding pay, being ordered to report early without pay, being denied lawful meal periods, and being “systematically shorted on their final wages.”

“Taken together, Plaintiffs allege 66.75–72.75 compensable hours in a single workweek. That is not close to the margin — it is 26.75–32.75 hours beyond the (Fair Labor Standards Act) threshold, and it independently triggers California’s daily overtime and double-time protections,” wrote attorney Rod M. Johnston. “Plaintiffs identify the workweek, the dates, the shift lengths, the uncompensated tasks, and the resulting totals.”

In a Jan. 23 order, U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter agreed with the nursing employees.

“Plaintiffs allege that, pursuant to a common USN policy, they each worked substantially more than 40 hours per work week without at least some overtime pay, and they have provided an estimate of the number of overtime hours worked. That is sufficient at this stage of the litigation,” he wrote.

The case is Alvarez et al. v. U.S. Nursing Corporation.