Congress quietly exempts home care workers from minimum wage rules
H.R. 2304 — Ensuring Access to Affordable and Quality Home Care for Seniors and People with Disabilities Act · Filed by Mary Miller (R-IL) · Introduced Mar 24, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to explicitly preserve and expand exemptions from minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers—including those employed through third-party agencies. It redefines 'companionship services' and 'domestic service' to cover a broad range of in-home care tasks (bathing, medication reminders, meal prep, etc.) and explicitly permits these workers to be classified as exempt from federal wage protections, even when employed by staffing agencies rather than directly by families.
Why we flagged it
The bill's functional purpose is to codify and expand existing Fair Labor Standards Act exemptions that allow home care workers to be paid below minimum wage and without overtime protections. Despite the title's focus on 'affordable and quality' care, the mechanism achieves affordability by exempting workers from wage protections, not by subsidizing care or improving quality standards.
What the text implies
- The bill explicitly extends exemptions to third-party employment agencies, meaning staffing companies can now legally pay home care workers below minimum wage—a significant expansion beyond direct family employment.
- By defining companionship services to include medical tasks like 'medication reminders' and 'bathing assistance,' the bill may blur the line between non-medical and medical care, potentially allowing lower-wage workers to perform quasi-medical duties without corresponding protections.
- The 20% threshold for general household work creates a loophole: employers can classify up to 20% of a worker's time as non-care household labor, reducing the proportion of time subject to care-worker protections.
- The bill does not establish any quality standards, training requirements, or oversight mechanisms for home care workers, despite the title's promise of 'quality' care. It is purely a labor-exemption measure.
- Seniors and disabled people relying on home care may face reduced service quality and worker turnover if wages remain suppressed, but the bill contains no safeguards or accountability measures.
Who it affects
Home care workers—predominantly women and immigrants—lose or retain minimal wage and overtime protections. The bill codifies exemptions that allow employers (including staffing agencies) to pay below minimum wage and avoid overtime pay for workers performing essential care for seniors and disabled people. This shifts labor costs onto workers while benefiting care agencies and insurers who contract their services.
Who stands to gain
- home care staffing agencies
- managed long-term care insurers (Medicaid/Medicare Advantage plans)
- private equity-backed home care operators
Named in the bill
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, Section 13 (FLSA exemptions), companionship services, domestic service, third-party employment, home care aides, certified nursing assistants, Humana (HUM), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Molina Healthcare (MOH), Universal Health Services (UHS)
Where it stands
- Mar 24, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Mar 24, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Education and Workforce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 5 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $90,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 2 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Mary Miller, the sponsor, reported $145,130 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Home Care Association of America — $60,000 on 2 filings
- Private Care Association Inc — $30,000 on 3 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the full bill text on Jul 2, 2026; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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