employ
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 323 U.S. 126 - Armour & Co. v. Wantock · 1944Most cited · 1,469 citing opinions
Fair Labor Standards Act · construing 29 U.S.C. § 201 · Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
employ' includes to suffer or permit to work.
How the Supreme Court has restated “employ”
Each Supreme Court definition of “employ,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “employ”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “employ” — 2,648 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1944–1947
The term 'employ' is defined in Section 3(g) to include 'to suffer or permit to work.
Section 3(g) of the Act defines 'employ' as including 'to suffer or permit to work' . . . The definition 'suffer or permit to work' was obviously not intended to stamp all persons as employees who, without any express or implied compensation agreement, might work for their own advantage on the premises of another.