Aug. 20, 2025 – What once could be a commute from Duluth to Superior, Dubuque to Platteville, or Lake County to Kenosha may now be work from home for a Wisconsin employer.

If an employee feels wronged by an employer, and Wisconsin law offers better results, does it apply to the remote worker physically working outside of Wisconsin?

The answer now may be, “maybe.”

While such disputes are likely developing, no Wisconsin appellate cases have addressed whether Wisconsin law applies to out-of-state remote workers connected to their Wisconsin employer primarily by Zoom or Teams.

Federal district court decisions say state law could apply but without citing Wisconsin case law as support.

Two Cases

Even before the pandemic, the issue generated an American Law Reports annotation that cites no Wisconsin cases – and the recommended Westlaw search to update the annotation for Wisconsin leads only to a federal district court case.^[1]

Two cases in other states recently addressed the question. Kuklenski v. Medtronic USA Inc., raised a discrimination claim under Minnesota law and Dubois v. Staples Inc., sought recovery under the Massachusetts Wage Act for work done in Rhode Island.

The cases part ways, but so do their facts.

Jan Kuklenski, living and working in Michigan, sought recovery under the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA) for alleged wrongful termination after her employer, Medtronic, did not grant additional medical leave.^[2]

The legislative policy empowering the MHRA focuses on conditions “in this state.”^[3] As the case points out, the MHRA defines employee as one “who resides or works in this state.”^[4]

After going through a textual analysis of “works in this state,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit noted “the statute’s definition of employee does not necessarily exclude a person who works both in and outside the state of Minnesota.”^[5]

But Kuklenski’s circumstances went too far. Once upon a time, she traveled to Minnesota for work, but it was a long time ago. She hadn’t set foot in the state since the pandemic.

Because she had no physical contact at all with Minnesota in her last 22 months of work, her absence could not be considered temporary. As a result, the appeals court affirmed the grant of summary judgement to Medtronic, killing her claim under Minnesota law.^[6]

Kuklenski alerts to the possibility that Minnesota employment law could apply outside the state – but only if the employee worked some part of the job in Minnesota. Purely remote work could not sustain a connection to Minnesota protections.

In another case, Abigail Dubois sought recovery under the Massachusetts Wage Act for commissions that she earned while working remotely in Rhode Island.^[7]

“The Wage Act does not only apply to employees located within Massachusetts,” the trial court explained in ruling on summary judgment.^[8]

“It also protects out-of-state employees so long as Massachusetts, ‘as compared to any other State, … has … the most significant relationship to … [plaintiff’s] employment relationship with [the employer].’”^[9]

A line of Massachusetts and federal cases, starting in 2013, developed that interpretation that outlined the state contacts analysis.^[10]

Dubois had regularly communicated with and physically gone to her employer’s workplace in Massachusetts, the state where it had its headquarters, allowing the possibility for recovery.^[11]

‘Lawless Nowhere Land’

Although commentary thrives discussing the effects of technology in furthering remote work and for taxation of remote workers, little evaluates coverage from state employment law.

The issue may be less relevant because federal laws, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act, provide protection.

“Teleworker plaintiffs will often seek the protection of their employer’s state worker protection statutes because employer’s state protections are often more favorable than the teleworker’s state protections,” wrote Rachel L. Blau in the George Washington Law Review last year.^[12]

“Notably, teleworkers are most frequently relocating from states with better worker protections … to a state with the worst protections – Texas.”^[13]

State laws vary, and the analysis of one may not answer the issue to the satisfaction in another state’s court.

“Because each statute is analyzed in isolation, a teleworker may be relegated to lawless nowhere land, unable to recover under any state statutory scheme,” Blau warned.^[14]

The issue is novel. The employee generally produces work that “has no physical relationship to the place in which it is performed.” The typical contacts with supervisors and the employer are irrelevant “to a teleworker, who conducts … work through cyberspace,”^[15] a “quasi-territorial” place.^[16]

“In contrast,” Blau explained, “the location of an employer is finite and determinable.”^[17]

More importantly, the employer’s “state has a strong interest in regulating the employer-teleworker relationship” – especially “in preventing in-state employers from manipulating their employees … to avoid abiding by in-state legislation.”^[18]

Wisconsin Law Now

The principal Wisconsin statutes involving employment include regulations in Wis. Stat. chapter 103, wage and hour laws (Wis. Stat. chapters 104, 109), and the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act (WFEA).^[19]

In chapter 109, “Employer” is defined as a person “employing one or more persons within the state.”^[20]

The WFEA derives from legislative policy to prohibit “unfair discrimination” to promote “the general welfare of the state” to benefit “all the people of the state.”^[21] Its definition of employer makes no mention of location.^[22]

Language in these laws, created long before one could imagine remote work, may seem securely confined to Wisconsin, but working “in the state” may mean something different now.

While the statutory chapter on employment regulations notes regulation of hour and overtime are matters of statewide concern “uniform throughout the state,”^[23] the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development “shall conduct such investigations . . . inside or outside of the state as may, in its judgment, tend to better execution of its functions.”^[24]

The Wisconsin worker’s compensation statute, supported by case law, extends outside the state for a Wisconsin-based company.^[25] Unemployment insurance contemplates the possibility of covering workers located outside Wisconsin.^[26]

A federal district court noted in Wendt v. Trifecta Solutions LLC that Wisconsin’s wage statute “does not expressly limit its coverage to in-state employees,” and definitions in chapters 103 and 104 “do not ‘address[ ] the geographical scope of the minimum wage provision.’”^[27]

But that case arrived as a default judgment, with the plaintiff notably failing to brief on the issue of extraterritoriality, and granting judgment based on Illinois’s law, which offered the better recovery.^[28]

The employee worked mostly in Illinois and briefly in Wisconsin for a Wisconsin company.^[29]

Federal cases, however, may merely guess what a state supreme court will hold, and the case doesn’t reference Wisconsin state cases to justify application of Wisconsin wage law.

Analytical Frameworks

Blau presented the standard analytical frameworks that arise in these cases – then demonstrated their limitations.

The statutory text offers the most logical choice, but “there is widespread agreement that statutes are usually silent as to their geographic scope.”^[30]

The Wisconsin statutory definitions fit that description, as held in Wendt and shown persuasively in Kuklenski.

Precedent, such as involving truck drivers or sales representatives, may offer an answer, but Blau pointed out these statutes operate from a world of physical, not virtual, jurisdiction.^[31]

For example, in Simonton v. Department of Industry, Labor & Human Relations, a truck driver for a Wisconsin company died while hauling in Minnesota.^[32]

Although the driver’s work changed to more out-of-state deliveries, his employer remained in Wisconsin. The widow could collect from Wisconsin’s worker’s compensation.^[33]

“It would be unreasonable,” the Wisconsin Supreme Court explained, “for an employee who has acquired a status in Wisconsin to be deprived of that status merely because the accident occurs elsewhere and to subject him to being ‘brought under any of the many different Compensation Acts, with which provisions he cannot hope to be familiar.’”^[34]

A contacts analysis, such as from personal jurisdiction or choice-of-law perspectives, invariably relies upon historical analysis of physical locations.^[35] Massachusetts developed this type of state-specific case law.

Government interest analysis that considers the forum’s interest in the case may conclude that the remote worker’s state has a greater interest than the state that may regulate the employer.^[36]

Wisconsin courts established a series of “choice-influencing considerations” for choice-of-law analysis, including in business matters.^[37]

Ultimately, whether the issue arises in Wisconsin rests on dollars and cents. In Wendt, Wisconsin law could be used, but Illinois’s minimum wage offered substantially better returns.

Wisconsin offers broad protections against discrimination in the WFEA and may have employment regulations not available in other states. Only the unique situations that arise will flesh out those possibilities.

Endnotes

[1] Deborah F. Buckman, Annotation, Extraterritorial Application of State Wage and Hours Laws, 29 A.L.R.7th Art. 7 (2017). ↩

[2] Kuklenski v. Medtronic USA Inc., 134 F.4th 528, 530 (8th Cir. 2025). ↩

[3] Minn. Stat. § 363A.02, subd. 1(a). ↩

[4] Kuklenski, 134 F.4th at 531 (citing Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subd. 15). ↩

[5] Id. at 531-33. ↩

[6] Id. at 530, 533. ↩

[7] Dubois v. Staples Inc., Civil No. 23-1746-BLS1, slip op. at 1-7 (Suffolk County Super. Ct. Apr. 1, 2025). ↩

[8] Id. at 9 (quotation); id. at 9-15 (regarding summary judgment). ↩

[9] Id. at 9. ↩

[10] Id. (citing Viscito v. National Planning Corp., 34 F.4th 78, 83 (1st Cir. 2022); Wilson v. Recorded Future Inc., 669 F. Supp. 3d 53, 58 (D. Mass. 2023) (noting that the statute “is silent as to its extraterritorial effect”); Dow v. Casale, 989 N.E.2d 909, 912-14 (Mass. App. Ct. 2013)). ↩

[11] Id. at 10-11. ↩

[12] Rachel L. Blau, Protecting Teleworkers: Unilateral Conflicts and Statutory Interpretation, 92 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 516, 518 (2024). ↩

[13] Id. at 521-22. ↩

[14] Id. at 516; see also id. at 519, 527-28 (providing further support). ↩

[15] Id. at 523-24. ↩

[16] Id. at 529. ↩

[17] Id. at 524-25. ↩

[18] Id. at 539-40. ↩

[19] Wis. Stat. §§ 111.31-.395. ↩

[20] Wis. Stat. § 109.01(2). ↩

[21] Wis. Stat. § 111.31(1)-(2). ↩

[22] Wis Stat. § 111.32(6). ↩

[23] Wis. Stat. § 103.007(1). ↩

[24] Wis. Stat. § 103.005(5)(a). ↩

[25] Wis. Stat. § 102.07(1) (defining employee to include “employed or injured within or without the state”); Simonton v. Dep’t of Indus., Labor & Human Relations, 62 Wis. 2d 112 (1974) (covering truck accident in Minnesota of employee of Wisconsin-based company). ↩

[26] Wis. Stat. § 108.02(15) (defining employment to include work outside the state). ↩

[27] Wendt v. Trifecta Sols. LLC, No. 23-CV-1415-JPS, 2024 WL 3201159, at *7 (E.D. Wis. June 27, 2024) (unpublished). ↩

[28] Id. at *1-*2, *6 n.5, *11-*12. ↩

[29] Id. at *2-*3. ↩

[30] Blau, supra note 12, at 529-30. ↩

[31] Id. at 531-32. ↩

[32] Simonton, 62 Wis. 2d at 114. ↩

[33] Id. at 115-18. ↩

[34] Id. at 122. ↩

[35] Blau, supra note 12, at 533-38. ↩

[36] Id. at 338-42. ↩

[37] Beloit Liquidating Tr. v. Grade, 2004 WI 39 ¶¶ 23-33 (analyzing based on statute and applying Heath v. Zellmer, 35 Wis. 2d 578, 595-96 (1967) (adopting choice-influencing considerations)). ↩