Porter, et al. v. T.J. Crowder and Sons, LLC

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in an unreported decision, recently affirmed a defense judgment in an FLSA overtime case brought by a Colorado feedlot worker and his wife. In Porter v. T.J. Crowder and Sons, LLC, the court held that a worker who loaded cattle manure from feedlot pens and transported it to an on-site composting area was employed in agriculture and therefore exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirement.

The decision also rejected the wife’s unpaid-wage claim on a separate ground: she did not establish that she was an employee during the period in which she claimed to have performed unpaid work.

Although the court’s order is nonprecedential and may be cited only for its persuasive value under Tenth Circuit rules, it offers a useful illustration of the fact-intensive analysis courts use when applying the FLSA’s agricultural exemption.

Case Background

T.J. Crowder and Sons, LLC, doing business as Humalfa, operated a composting business that converted raw cattle manure into fertilizer. One of its composting operations was located at a Five Rivers Cattle Feeding feedlot in Yuma, Colorado.

Five Rivers employees cleaned cattle pens and accumulated manure in piles. Humalfa employees then loaded the manure onto trucks, moved it to an on-site compost yard, and placed it in windrows for composting.

Christopher Porter worked for Humalfa as a “manure handler” from 2007 through 2021, with a break in 2019. He generally worked 40 to 50 hours per week and sometimes as many as 70 hours, but Humalfa paid straight time rather than overtime.

Mr. Porter alleged that Humalfa violated the FLSA by not paying overtime. His wife, Breanna Porter, separately alleged that she performed unpaid work for Humalfa, including occasionally assisting Mr. Porter, obtaining parts, and delivering weight tickets.

After two bench trials, the district court concluded that Mr. Porter’s work was agricultural and exempt from overtime, while Ms. Porter had not proven an amount of recoverable unpaid wages. The Porters appealed.

The FLSA Agricultural Exemption

The FLSA ordinarily requires covered employers to pay overtime at one-and-one-half times an employee’s regular rate for hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1).

But 29 U.S.C. § 213(b)(12) exempts from the overtime requirement “any employee employed in agriculture.”

The statute defines agriculture to include both traditional farming activity and certain work performed by a farmer or on a farm “as an incident to or in conjunction with” farming operations. See 29 U.S.C. § 203(f).

The second category is commonly described as “secondary agriculture.” To qualify, the activity must be performed by a farmer or on a farm and must be incident to or connected with farming operations.

The employer had the burden to prove the exemption by a preponderance of the evidence.

Why the Court Found the Work Agricultural

There was no meaningful dispute that Mr. Porter performed his work on a farm: the cattle pens and the compost yard were located on the feedlot property. The issue was whether his work was sufficiently connected to the feedlot’s cattle-raising operations.

The district court determined that removing manure was an “undisputably integral step” in the feedlot’s operation because leaving manure in the cattle pens would restrict the cattle’s movement.

The Tenth Circuit agreed. It emphasized the close relationship between raising cattle and Mr. Porter’s role loading raw manure directly from livestock pens and moving it elsewhere on the same farm.

The court relied on the statutory text and on Department of Labor regulations directing courts to examine the overall relationship of the work to farming rather than mechanically apply isolated factors.

Separate Businesses Did Not Control the Result

Mr. Porter argued that Humalfa was an independent composting business and that Five Rivers was a separate feedlot operator. He further argued that Humalfa operated for its own commercial benefit, not for the farmer.

Those facts did not change the outcome. The court focused on the work Mr. Porter actually performed—not all work performed by Humalfa employees. His job involved collecting and transporting raw manure within the feedlot, rather than processing the manure or transporting finished compost off-site.

The court reasoned that this work more closely resembled collecting an agricultural byproduct at the farm than operating a separate off-farm processing or transportation business.

Importantly, the court expressly declined to decide whether employees working in other parts of Humalfa’s composting operation would be exempt. The exemption inquiry remained tied to the particular worker’s duties and circumstances.

Wife’s Unpaid-Wage Claim Failed at the Employee-Status Stage

Breanna Porter sought FLSA wages for work allegedly performed after one period of formal employment ended and before she was later rehired.

The appellate court affirmed judgment against her, but not solely because of the proof of damages. Instead, it concluded that she had not met her threshold burden to establish that she was an employee during the disputed period.

The court applied the FLSA’s economic-realities test, which assesses whether an asserted employment relationship actually existed.

The record included testimony that Humalfa had not requested Ms. Porter to perform the work for which she sought compensation, the lack of employment documentation during the relevant period, and her testimony that she performed tasks in hopes of creating an incentive for Humalfa to hire her.

Because FLSA minimum-wage and overtime protections apply to employees, a plaintiff must establish that an employment relationship existed before relying on rules governing compensation for work the employer knew or should have known was performed.

Key Takeaways

• Agricultural-exemption disputes are highly fact-dependent.The court focused on Mr. Porter’s specific task—removing raw manure from cattle pens and moving it within the feedlot—not the entirety of Humalfa’s composting enterprise.
• Working for a separate contractor does not necessarily defeat the exemption.Here, the connection between the manure-removal work and the feedlot’s livestock operation was sufficient despite the separate corporate identities of Humalfa and Five Rivers.
• Not every composting-related job is necessarily exempt.The court limited its decision to the job duties presented in this case.
• A claim for unpaid work begins with employee status.A person who voluntarily performs tasks in anticipation of future employment may face difficulty proving the required employer-employee relationship.

The Bottom Line

In Porter v. T.J. Crowder and Sons, LLC, the Tenth Circuit concluded that a feedlot manure handler was exempt from FLSA overtime because his work was an integral, on-farm component of the cattle operation.

The decision underscores that FLSA exemption issues turn on the actual work performed, its relationship to the relevant agricultural operation, and the totality of the circumstances.

Click Porter, et al. v. T.J. Crowder and Sons, LLC to read the entire Tenth Circuit Opinion.