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considerations are relevant regardless of whether the members’ motivation to live in this manner
is based on religious conviction, as here, or on a secular ideology, as might be true in other cases,
as long they have chosen to donate their services free of coercion by the community. See Alamo
Found., 471 U.S. at 300–02 & n.22; Cathedral Buffet, 887 F.3d at 767. We see no evidence of
coercion in the facts you have provided. Your client’s members differ significantly from the
workers at issue in Alamo Foundation, particularly with respect to their receipt of benefits. The
Alamo Foundation operated commercial businesses staffed by “associates” who allegedly
expected and received “in-kind benefits” in exchange for their services. 471 U.S. at 301 n.22.
They were “‘fined’ heavily for poor job performance, worked on a ‘commission’ basis, and were
prohibited from obtaining food from the cafeteria if they were absent from work—even if the
absence was due to illness or inclement weather.” Id. Nothing in your letter suggests remotely
similar practices; to the contrary, your letter states that members receive food, shelter, medical
care, and funds for personal subsistence “not as a right or in proportion to services rendered, but
according to need.” Moreover, unlike your client, the Alamo Foundation did not expressly
invoke the exception under FOH 10b03 and had an implied agreement for compensation with its
workers that ultimately gave rise to an employment relationship. Id. at 301–05.
Additionally, even if they might otherwise be considered employees under the FLSA, we believe
your client’s members fall squarely within the ministerial exception recognized in Hosanna-
Tabor. Although there is “no rigid formula” for determining who qualifies for the ministerial
exception, Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 190, your clients’ members’ way of life resembles that of
a monastic community. Given the egalitarian relationships among the members, it is difficult to
distinguish them from the nuns, monks, and others who believe themselves called to lead lives of
service and are exempted from the FLSA even when they comprise the totality of the religious
community and are not just in positions of ecclesiastical leadership. Consistent with their vow of
poverty, members in your client’s communities share all in common, grow most of their own
food, house themselves, share kitchens, gather together often for meals and for worship, and
provide for most of their own education, healthcare, and other necessities. Imposing the FLSA
on these members and their community would force them to recognize private property, wages,
and hierarchical economic relationships among members—vitiating their central religious tenets.
“The vow of poverty is a hallowed religious observance; an intent to destroy it cannot reasonably
be ascribed to the draftsmen of the Fair Labor Standards Act.” Schleicher, 518 F.3d at 476.
Members of these communities are “[p]ersons such as nuns, monks, priests, lay brothers,
ministers, deacons, and other members of religious orders who serve pursuant to their religious
obligations,” whom FOH 10b03(b) confirms are not employees under the FLSA.
This holds true for the community members working at your client’s two nonprofit, income-
generating ventures. Given the facts you have provided, the members’ work at the ventures is an
inextricable part of their religious communal life: to them, work is “indivisible from prayer” and
a “form of worship.” See Schleicher, 518 F.3d at 476–77 (holding that the FLSA did not apply
to ministers of the Salvation Army in part because “salvation through work is a religious tenet of
the Salvation Army” and their supervision of thrift shops and sales had “a spiritual dimension”);
cf. Alcazar, 627 F.3d at 1292 (“A church may well assign secular duties to an aspiring member
of the clergy, either to promote a spiritual value (such as diligence, obedience, or compassion) or
to promote its religious mission in some material way.”). Of course, community members may
provide services for which a potentially competing enterprise elsewhere in the economy
compensates its employees. But that fact establishes at most that the income-generating ventures