⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Fifth Circuit hears oral argument in Hamm versus Ochsner-Acadia, a hybrid wage and hour case that brings together both a Fair Labor Standards Act collective action and a Rule 23 class action. At the center of the dispute: whether patient care workers at a psychiatric facility in Louisiana are entitled to be paid for meal breaks that the employer says were bona fide unpaid breaks, but that the workers claim were routinely interrupted or spent on call. The defendant hospital argues that the district court improperly certified both a collective and a class based solely on the theoretical possibility that breaks could be interrupted, without rigorously analyzing how often interruptions actually occurred or whether those interruptions made the breaks predominantly for the employer's benefit. The workers counter that the meal break policy encouraged staff to stay on the premises and acknowledged that breaks could be interrupted, that a separate patient care policy required them to keep attending to patients on pain of discipline, and that in practice staff ate at the nursing station, monitoring patients and answering questions while off the clock, turning what should have been genuine breaks into compensable work time. The appeal also raises a procedural question about whether the Fifth Circuit's decision in Swales forecloses any later effort to decertify a collective once notice has gone out.

Hamm v. Ochsner-Acadia (No. 25-30603) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, argued August 4, 2026.