Ensuring Access to Affordable and Quality Home Care for Seniors and People with Disabilities Act

This bill, titled the "Ensuring Access to Affordable and Quality Home Care for Seniors and People with Disabilities Act," seeks to maintain crucial exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). Its primary goal is to preserve the exemption from minimum wage and overtime pay for companionship services and the overtime pay exemption for live-in domestic services , aiming to ensure continued access to affordable home care. The legislation provides specific definitions for these terms, clarifying that companionship services involve non-medical personal care and related household tasks for individuals unable to care for themselves, excluding services by trained medical personnel. It also defines domestic service broadly to include various household roles and introduces the concept of third-party employment for these services, meaning employment by an entity other than the family receiving care. A key provision of the bill is the amendment of the FLSA to explicitly state that these exemptions apply even when companionship services and live-in domestic services are provided through third-party employment . This change is designed to prevent these workers from being subject to minimum wage and overtime requirements when employed by agencies, thereby codifying the historical scope of these exemptions.