Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro (16-1362)

argument 16-1362

Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro

Supreme Court of the United States 56 min 6 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 7 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the statutory exemption at issue in Encino Motorcars v. Navarro?

John G. Roberts 0:00

We'll hear argument first this morning in case sixteen thirteen sixty two. Encino motor cars versus Navarro. Mr Clement.

Jeffrey L. Fisher 0:09

Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. Service advisors are salespeople primarily engaged in servicing automobiles. Service advisors are plainly salespeople, and what they sell and what they are primarily engaged in is the servicing of automobiles. Thus, respondents and the nation's 100,000 service advisors come within the literal disjunctive text of the FLSA exemption for any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles, trucks, or farm implements.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg 0:45

Is there any other category the the statute lists three categories salesman, partsman? and mechanics. And you say the service advisor is un should fit under salesman. Is there any other person that's not specifically enumerated that's s subsumed under one of these categories?

Jeffrey L. Fisher 1:10

Uh there is, Justice Ginsburg, if what you mean is a sort of an occupation that was well understood at the time that Congress passed this exemption in nineteen sixty six. The example would be automobile body repairment. I was treated as a separate category, for example, in the Occupational Outlook handbook that my friends on the other side like so much. But yet the Labor Department has consistently treated repairmen in the body shop as covered by the exemption, just like mechanics in the service shop. So I think that goes a long way to showing that it's not like Congress was consulting this handbook at all or had this conception that it was going with a three to three correspondence with existing occupations and what it was trying to capture in the statute.

Anthony M. Kennedy 1:55

uh the literal meaning. And you have some good arguments, but I have to tell you I don't think that that's the best one of them. Just if you think of what servicing means, and this is one dictionary, but basically all dictionaries say the same thing. It means to perform services of maintenance, supply, repair, installation. as to service a car. So it actually means to do the work, to do the repair, to do the maintenance, I think would be the most ordinary understanding of what servicing means. So it does seem as though For all the arguments that you do have, that one cuts against you. That you know just the ordinary meaning of what it means to be engaged in servicing automobiles Is to be repairing, maintaining, fixing cars.

Jeffrey L. Fisher 2:45

Well, Your Honor, I mean I would love to talk to you about some of the other arguments you seem to like better, but let me try to push back a little bit on this one, which is I'm the f be the first to admit that servicing in some statutes can have a relatively narrow compass and includes only essentially turning the wrenches yourself. But in other contexts it can have a broader meaning, supplying the service, providing the service. And here we know that Congress used the term in that latter broader sense because of the inclusion of partsmen. Because partsmen are not engaged in getting under the hood and turning the wrenches. The best place to look at what a partsman does is the Labour Department regulation that has been on the books since nineteen seventy.

Jeffrey L. Fisher 3:22

It specifically talks about what a partsman is primarily engaged in, and that is the requisitioning, stocking and dispensing of parts.

Anthony M. Kennedy 3:30

So I I th that is one of the better arguments, I think, is what what Partsman is doing in this. But I think I'm still suggesting before we get on to that that if you took Partsman out of this statute, I don't really think that you'd have a leg to stand on here. That we would just naturally mean Well, servicing automobiles is like fixing them. And what and these service providers, they have something to do with servicing to be sure, but they're not doing the servicing. What they're doing is selling service products.

Jeffrey L. Fisher 4:03

Well, Y Your Honor, I think if Partsmen were not in the statute, I would have a weaker argument. I think I still might have a leg to stand on, especially if there were four decades of industry reliance on a position. But I do think that the partsmen can't be ignored, and I do think it's actually a mistake to sort of look at servicing in isolation from the inclusion of partsmen in the statute.