Bill shields companies from proving workers are employees
S. 2210 — Unlocking Benefits for Independent Workers Act · Filed by Bill Cassidy (R-LA) · 6 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 8, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill prohibits federal employment law from considering whether a company provides 'portable benefits' (benefits an individual can keep even after leaving the job) when deciding if someone is an employee or an independent contractor. It means a company can offer health insurance, retirement accounts, or other benefits without that offering being used as evidence that the worker is an employee rather than a contractor.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is to exclude a category of evidence (portable benefits) from the legal test for employee status. This functions as a safe harbor for companies seeking to reclassify workers as contractors while offering benefits that might otherwise signal employment.
What the text implies
- Portable benefits become a substitute for employment status rather than a marker of it. A company can offer health insurance, retirement matching, or paid leave to a contractor and use this bill to argue those benefits do not indicate employment.
- The bill does not require companies to offer portable benefits. It only shields them from being counted as evidence. A company offering nothing is unaffected; a company offering benefits to contractors gains legal cover.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
gig economy platforms (ride-share, delivery, freelance marketplaces); staffing and temp agencies; companies using contractor workforces