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Employer Law Blog

We address issues, cases and matters of statutory and regulatory compliance of employment law that can impact a business' growth and profitability.

Employer Law Blog
August 20, 2015

Pay Me!  Should Interns be Paid? A New Test

Plaintiffs were unpaid interns on the Fox Searchlight distributed film Black Swan. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found the Black Swan interns were employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law. The court applied a version of the U.S. Labor Department’s six factor test, which was derived from the 68 year-old Supreme Court decision Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., 330 U.S. 148 (1947), to determine whether the interns fell within an exception for unpaid trainees.