Over 300,000 Wisconsinites chose to be their own boss. A Biden-era rule put that at risk. It’s being fixed and WILL helped make the case to the federal government.
WHY IT MATTERS
Workers want to be independent. The 2024 rule got in the way.
Over 300,000 Wisconsinites are independent contractors, working as freelancers, gig drivers, consultants, and tradespeople. They chose this type of work for a multitude of reasons. They want flexibility to set their own hours, freedom to choose their own clients, and control over their own work product. Quite simply, they want economic liberty.
The Biden administration’s 2024 rule threatened all of that. It created a confusing, six-factor test with no clear answer, meaning the federal government could look at an independent contractor arrangement and decide, after the fact, that the worker was really an employee all along.
THE PROBLEM
The old rule made it impossible to know where you stood.
Federal law treats employees and independent contractors differently. Employees get minimum wage protections and overtime rules. Contractors set their own rates and control their own work. That’s fine, but only if everyone knows which category they’re in.
The 2024 Biden rule made that impossible to know. It listed six factors the government could weigh but said none of them mattered more than the others. It even left the door open for unnamed additional factors. No one could be sure how the government would add it all up and decide, which led to unpredictability for businesses and workers alike.
The result? A business and a worker could agree to a contractor arrangement, work together for a year, and then have the government show up and categorize it as an employment relationship. The worker never asked for that. The business never planned for it. But both were stuck with it.
THE CAUTIONARY TALE
California tried this. It is a disaster.
California passed a law that assumed gig workers were employees unless businesses could prove otherwise. The fallout was immediate:
- Vox Media — which advocated for the law—cut hundreds of freelance journalists after the law passed.
- Uber and Lyft publicly questioned whether they could keep operating in the state.
- Drivers who wanted to stay independent found themselves reclassified anyway.
Californians eventually voted to carve rideshare and delivery workers back out of this regulatory scheme. Unfortunately, other California workers are still subject to the burdensome law. The California experiment shows that when the government presumes workers are employees, workers are hurt and their contracts are at risk of elimination.
THE FIX
Trump’s DOL is restoring a clearer, fairer standard.
The Department of Labor’s new proposed rule throws out the 2024 approach. Instead of six equally weighted factors and an open-ended guessing game, it brings back two core questions that get to the heart of the matter:
- How much control does the company have over how the work gets done?
- Does the worker have a real chance for profit or loss, based on their own decisions?
If those two things point in the same direction, that’s your answer. Workers and businesses know where they stand before the government ever gets involved.
The new rule also uses the same standard across three different federal laws. One consistent rule means less confusion and lower costs for everyone.
WHAT WILL DID
We filed a public comment urging DOL to finalize the new rule.
WILL submitted a formal comment to the Department of Labor in support of the new proposed rule. We made the case that workers who choose independence deserve a government that respects that choice—not one that second-guesses them after the fact. WILL strongly urged the Department to finalize its proposed rule, which would benefit hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin workers.
- GO DEEPER: Read WILL’s full public comment filed with the Department of Labor: https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/RIN-1235-AA46-WILL.pdf
Erin Gamble
Associate Counsel