Florida Federal Court Provides Guidance on the Application of the WARN Act to Fully Remote Workforces

The court held that the company’s fully remote, geographically dispersed non-pilot employees did not share a “single site of employment,” a statutory prerequisite for the application of the WARN Act, and that a largely vacant corporate headquarters could not serve as that site. Addressing what it described as a question of first impression in the Eleventh Circuit, the decision provides guidance for the increasingly common situation in which employees are geographically dispersed and work remotely. 

Background

Volato, Inc. provided ad hoc charter services, employing both pilots and non-pilot staff. Its pilots flew from home to an assigned aircraft and stayed with that aircraft through each rotation. Its non-pilot employees, by contrast, worked remotely in various states, had no assigned offices, were not required to report to any fixed physical location, and reported to supervisors who themselves worked remotely from various states.

Volato maintained a mailing address in Chamblee, Georgia, and office space at the St. Augustine, Florida airport. According to the company, both locations were generally unmanned and, when in use, occupied no more than 10 employees at any time.

On or about August 30, 2024, Volato terminated the plaintiffs, along with at least 200 other employees, to facilitate an aircraft management services agreement between its parent, Volato Group, Inc., and flyExclusive. One named plaintiff worked “completely remote” from Texas; another lived in Florida for most of her tenure before relocating to Texas shortly before her termination. The plaintiffs sued on behalf of a putative class, alleging that the defendants violated the WARN Act by failing to provide 60 days’ written notice. The parties cross-moved for summary judgment.

Analysis and Outcome

For a plant closing or mass layoff to trigger the requirements of the WARN Act, there must be an employment loss for 50 or more full-time employees at a “single site of employment” within a 30-day period. The parties agreed that Volato terminated more than 50 employees within 30 days in August 2024; the only question was whether those employees worked at a single site. The plaintiffs argued that, because no employee had a fixed work location, all employees should be treated as working at Volato’s Chamblee headquarters. The court rejected that position under both provisions of the US Department of Labor (DOL) regulation (20 C.F.R. § 639.3(i)) on which the plaintiffs relied.

• Subsection (6) — Mobile Workers: This provision assigns workers who travel, are outstationed, or work outside the employer’s regular sites to the site serving as their “home base,” the site from which their work is assigned, or the site to which they report. The court held that remote workers do not fit: their duties did not require travel, they were not “outstationed” because they could work wherever they opened a laptop, and they worked outside any regular site only because Volato had none. The court held that subsection (6) covers only “truly mobile workers,” such as the railroad workers, bus drivers, and salespersons listed in the regulation, and that mobile workers are distinct from remote workers. 
• Subsection (8) — “Truly Unusual Organizational Situations”: The plaintiffs also argued that the catchall provision under subsection (8) should allow the court to treat the vacant headquarters as every employee’s site of employment. Turning to the statute’s plain text, the court concluded that a “site” is a physical location, and that “site of employment” means either where the act of employing occurs or where work is performed. The statute’s reference to transfers “within a reasonable commuting distance” and its requirement to notify state rapid-response agencies and local elected officials, in part because of potential community impact, confirmed that the Act is tied to a specific geographic community. Reading the catchall to cover any company with enough employees, wherever they work, would “untether the WARN Act from any geographical limits.” In the court’s words, whatever subsection (8) means, “it cannot provide a red pen to re-write the statute that Congress enacted.”

Why It Matters

Employers have long faced uncertainty about whether and how the WARN Act applies when a reduction in force affects remote employees. This decision, together with recent rulings from the Middle District of Tennessee and the Eastern District of Virginia cited by the court, signals an emerging consensus that fully remote employees are not “mobile workers” under the DOL regulation and cannot be aggregated at a nominal headquarters merely because they work for the same company. For distributed employers, that may mean that large layoffs of remote staff fall outside federal WARN notice obligations altogether.

The ruling has limits, however. Its reasoning turned on specific facts: there was no functioning office, supervisors were themselves remote and none oversaw 50 or more employees, and no meaningful group of employees reported to any physical location. Employers with hybrid workforces, remote employees tethered to an active office, or managers concentrated at a single facility may face a different analysis. The decision also does not address state “mini-WARN” statutes, some of which have different coverage triggers, and the regulation expressly states that applying the single-site definition with intent to evade the WARN Act’s notice purpose is not acceptable.

Key Takeaways

• Courts increasingly distinguish mobile workers, whose jobs require travel, from remote workers, who telecommute. Fully remote employees are unlikely to be assigned to a headquarters “home base” under 20 C.F.R. § 639.3(i)(6).
• Where supervisors are also remote, the location of day-to-day management matters. Employers should map where remote employees’ supervisors work and how many employees each oversees before a reduction in force; concentration of 50 or more employees under managers at one physical location may change the result.
• A nominal headquarters or mailing address is not, by itself, a single site of employment. However, employers with functioning offices to which remote employees report, or from which their work is assigned, should not assume the same outcome.
• Because the law remains unsettled, no circuit court has squarely resolved the issue, and state mini-WARN laws may apply independently, employers planning layoffs affecting remote workers should evaluate notice obligations case by case and contact counsel for advice on the best approach in the circumstances.