Flowers Foods v. Brock: The Supreme Court Narrows a Key Arbitration Defense in the Eleventh Circuit

On May 28, 2026, a unanimous Supreme Court decided Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock, the latest in a line of cases interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act's exemption for transportation workers. For employers across Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, the decision quietly upends a rule the Eleventh Circuit has applied for years.

The FAA generally forces parties to honor their arbitration agreements. But Section 1 carves out an exception: courts cannot compel arbitration in disputes over the “contracts of employment” of “seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” For two decades, the central fight has been over who qualifies for this exemption.

Angelo Brock distributed Flowers Foods products around Denver. He picked the goods up from a Colorado warehouse and delivered them to local stores without ever leaving the state. When Brock sued over alleged underpayment, Flowers moved to compel arbitration. Brock invoked the Section 1 exemption for workers engaged in interstate commerce. Flowers countered with a bright-line rule: a worker is “engaged in interstate commerce” only if he crosses state lines or handles a vehicle that does, which Brock did not.

A unanimous Supreme Court rejected that rule. Writing for the Court, Justice Gorsuch held that a worker who moves goods on the intrastate leg of an interstate journey can qualify for the exemption even if he never crosses a state line or touches a vehicle that did. Drawing on the statute's 1925 meaning and cases like The Daniel Ball (1871), the Court reasoned that a continuous shipment from one state to another constitutes interstate commerce even where much of the trip happens inside a single state. Each driver in a relay — including the one who handles only the final, local leg — plays a direct and necessary role.

Here is why this matters to Eleventh Circuit employers and workers: In Hamrick v. Partsfleet (2021), the court addressed “final-mile” drivers who carried goods from a local warehouse to nearby customers after those goods had already arrived from out of state. Applying its two-part Paladino-Hill test, the Eleventh Circuit asked whether the class of workers “actually engages” in interstate commerce — focusing on what the workers do, not where the goods have been. It strongly suggested that purely intrastate drivers fall outside the exemption.

Flowers Foods cuts against that reasoning. The Supreme Court made clear that staying within one state is not disqualifying, and that the real question is whether the worker forms a direct and necessary link in the interstate movement of goods. Final-mile and last-leg drivers in our region — precisely the workers Hamrick viewed with skepticism — now have a far stronger argument that their disputes belong in court, not arbitration.

Still, employers should not overread the decision. The Court resolved only the narrow question Flowers presented. It expressly left open other potential limits on the exemption, including whether an arrangement run through a worker's own business entity is a “contract of employment” at all, and whether a distributor who buys and takes title to goods before reselling them is “engaged in” interstate transport. Those questions remain live and will shape the next rounds of litigation.

If you have questions about how Flowers Foods affects your arbitration agreements or pending disputes, our litigation team is here to help.