Bakery Win on Out-of-State Pay Collectives Widens Circuit Split

Workers in New York and Connecticut can’t pursue group wage claims against Bimbo Bakeries USA Inc. as part of a Vermont-based lawsuit, the Second Circuit held in a decision that widened a lopsided split.

All potential Fair Labor Standards Act collective members, not just the named plaintiff, must establish specific personal jurisdiction in the forum state when the employer is located elsewhere, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Monday.

The Vermont federal court doesn’t have any evidence in the record to justify exercising personal jurisdiction over the out-of-state plaintiffs’ FLSA claims, the circuit court found.

The decision—which applies to federal district courts in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont—joins rulings from five other circuit courts that impose stricter limits on out-of-state workers’ participation, in contrast to the First Circuit’s plaintiff-friendly approach.

The divide affects where workers can use the collective method to band together to pursue their federal wage claims, which might not be worth taking to court individually.

The Second Circuit followed the Third, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth circuits to apply the US Supreme Court’s Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court ruling, handed down in 2017 and addressing mass actions, to the collective context. The First Circuit stands alone in declining to do so. The Supreme Court in February rejected workers’ call for review of the Ninth Circuit decision, at the time the latest addition to the split.

The workers here deliver Bimbo’s bakery products to stores under distributor agreements, which deem them independent contractors. They allege they’re actually employees entitled to greater wage protections, such as overtime pay. They sued a Pennsylvania-based US arm of multinational bakery conglomerate Grupo Bimbo in federal court in Vermont.

Judge Gerard Lynch, an Obama appointee, authored the opinion, which was joined by Judges Raymond Lohier, an Obama appointee, and Steven Menashi, a Trump appointee.

Woolmington, Campbell, Bent & Stasny PC; Wanta Thome PLC; and Minneapolis-based Scott Moriarity represent the workers. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP represents Bimbo.

The case is Provencher v. Bimbo Foods Bakeries Distrib. LLC, 2d Cir., No. 24-3112, 5/4/26.