The Department of Labor is trying to roll back progress for women in the workforce. Among the department’s new policies is a proposed rule that would strip millions of home-care workers of federal minimum wage and overtime protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This month, the ACLU and National Domestic Workers Alliance submitted comments to the department strongly opposing this proposed change.
In 1938, when Congress passed the FLSA and established fair wage standards for the American workforce, it excluded domestic and agricultural workers – occupations with some of the largest concentrations of Black workers – from the law’s protections. These exclusions created and maintained classes of workers earning sub-minimum wage, perpetuating the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. The domestic worker exclusion also further entrenched the view that work performed by women in the home is inherently less valuable and less deserving of compensation than other forms of labor.
In 2013, the Department of Labor explicitly recognized that home-care workers deserved to be compensated like everyone else. It issued a rule explaining that only a narrow category of casual caregiving work could fall under the FLSA’s exemption. Under the 2013 rule, professional caregivers were guaranteed federal minimum wage and overtime.
Today, the Trump administration’s new policies and rules that attempt to reinstate the exemption for domestic labor are rooted in outdated stereotypes about caregiving work, which is still performed overwhelmingly by women, in particular, women of color and immigrants.
At the ACLU, we know that this discriminatory proposed rule is unlawful. It ignores the realities of the home-care business and the economic precarity that most of these workers face. The proposed rule also ignores Congress’s attempts, since 1938, to dramatically limit the FLSA’s domestic worker exemption and extend the law’s protections. If this proposed rule is allowed to take effect, millions of home care workers will suffer. This means that many of the essential workers who care for our loved ones every day will face significant economic hardship. Many will have to choose between staying in their jobs and seeking better-paying work, so that they are able to take care of themselves and provide for their own families.
Denise Lugo, a member of the National Domestic Worker alliance, explains the harm of the proposed rule on home-care workers like her, and on the entire care economy.
I have spent over 30 years working as a care worker, supporting aging adults and people with disabilities in North Carolina. I have changed bedpans and administered medications. I have skipped my own doctor visits to make sure someone else could keep theirs. I have done this job quietly and faithfully, without a pension, paid sick days, or health care.
Even now, in my 60s, I am still working. I have to.
This is what care work looks like – Black women like me who show up every day to do the work that keeps this country running. The 2013 Department of Labor rule recognized what we have always known: care work is real work. Now, that same Department of Labor wants to undo it.
Today, the majority of home care workers are still Black, Brown, and immigrant women – overworked, underpaid, and often invisible in policy conversations. We live at or below the poverty line despite providing life-saving care. The median annual income for a home-care worker is less than $22,000. Nearly 60 percent of us –including myself– rely on public assistance just to get by, even with the 2013 minimum wage and overtime rule in place.
I know this personally. I was denied Medicaid for years, despite working full-time in healthcare. I made too much to qualify, but not enough to afford private insurance. I skipped doctor’s appointments, rationed blood pressure medication, and relied on the local health department when I got sick. That changed when North Carolina expanded Medicaid. I finally got coverage, and the medications I need to manage my diabetes, thyroid, heart, and kidney health. That care keeps me alive. It keeps me working.
But recently, Congress passed the “Big Beautiful Budget Act,” slashing nearly a trillion from Medicaid. Home care workers like me are already seeing the impact. Now, the Department of Labor is proposing this rule change that would further gut the fragile system we’ve been holding together for decades. This rule change is a dangerous rollback of hard-won rights. It would leave millions of workers like me without wage protections and push an already vulnerable workforce deeper into poverty. The justification for this decision relies on outdated and discriminatory logic that continues to deny care workers our humanity, our professionalism, and our rights.
This is not sustainable. In 2023 every state reported direct care worker shortages.. More than 700,000 people are on Medicaid waitlists for home care. The AARP’s “Caregiving in the U.S.” 2025 report confirms what I see every day: families are desperate for care, and workers are burning out.
If I walk away from this job, the families I serve will be left scrambling. They won’t be able to go to work. Their loved ones won’t get the support they need. I have seen what happens when care falls through. It is terrifying.
This rule change would only accelerate that collapse. It tells workers like me that our labor is not valued. That we can be erased from labor law, and erased from public concern.
We cannot let that happen.
I’ll keep doing this work as long as I’m able. But I cannot survive off dignity alone. I need a living wage. I need health care. I need to be seen.
Denise Lugo is a Certified Nurse Assistant and home care worker based in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She is a member of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and We Dream in Black.
Published September 24, 2025 at 05:06PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/yJHp8FK
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