Are relief veterinarians usually classified as independent contractors or employees?

Historically most relief veterinarians have been treated as independent contractors, but that classification depends on the actual working relationship, not the label in a contract. A relief vet with a fixed schedule, practice-supplied equipment, and no other clients looks more like an employee under nearly every federal and state test.

Does the ABC test apply to veterinarians in California?

No. California's AB 5 law exempts licensed veterinarians from the ABC test specifically, routing them instead to the older Borello test. That test still presumes employee status and requires the practice to prove independence across 13 factors.

Is the federal independent contractor rule changing in 2026?

The DOL proposed in February 2026 to rescind its 2024 classification rule and revive a version of the 2021 rule's test, which weights a worker's control over their schedule and their opportunity for profit or loss more heavily than other factors. The proposal has not been finalized.

Which states carry the highest classification risk for relief veterinary staffing?

Any of the roughly 33 states applying the ABC test carries elevated risk, since that test presumes employee status by default. California and New Jersey are the two most frequently discussed in veterinary-specific legal commentary, though most ABC-test states offer no veterinarian exemption at all. Getting this right shift by shift is hard to do with agency staffing, since the agency, not the practice, usually controls the paperwork. Groove by Hound lets practices run their own relief network instead, tracking 1099 and W2 relief professionals side by side without the markup that comes from routing that same coverage through an outside agency.

Guide to Classifying Veterinary Relief Workers (1099 vs W2)

Q: What happens if a practice misclassifies a relief veterinarian?

The hiring practice, not the worker, typically bears the liability: back payroll taxes, unpaid overtime, retroactive workers' compensation premiums, and potential benefits liability. This exposure applies regardless of what both parties agreed to in a written contract.

Federal regulators keep changing their minds about who counts as an employee. Whether that puts your relief roster at risk depends on your state as much as your paperwork.

A relief veterinarian working the same three shifts a month at your practice for the past two years is, in the eyes of most state labor departments, starting to look less like an independent contractor and more like a part-time employee, and the federal rules that were supposed to settle that question keep changing underneath practices that relied on them. The U.S. Department of Labor proposed in February 2026 to rescind its 2024 worker classification rule and revive a version of the more contractor-friendly test used from 2021 through 2024, according to a Quarles law firm analysis of the proposal. That federal reset matters, but it is not the whole picture. A third of U.S. states, California and New Jersey among them, apply their own "ABC test" for worker classification, and that state-level test can override the federal answer entirely regardless of what the DOL decides.

Key Takeaways

The DOL proposed rescinding its 2024 worker classification rule in February 2026 and reviving a version of the more contractor-friendly 2021 "economic reality" test.
33 states already apply their own ABC test, which presumes a worker is an employee unless the hiring practice proves otherwise on three separate points.
California specifically exempts veterinarians from the ABC test in favor of the multi-factor Borello test, but that exemption does not make relief vets automatically safe as contractors.
Misclassification exposes a practice to back taxes, unpaid overtime, and workers' compensation liability, regardless of what the relief worker agreed to in writing.

A note on our data: the federal rulemaking below is still a proposal, not a final rule, as of this writing. State-level tests and exemptions are current as of publication but change through legislation and litigation; verify against current counsel before relying on any single state's status here.

What the Federal Rules Actually Say Right Now

The DOL's 2024 rule required weighing six "economic reality" factors, no single one decisive, to determine whether a relief worker was economically dependent on a practice (employee) or genuinely in business for themselves (contractor). Since May 2025, the Wage and Hour Division has stopped enforcing that rule during investigations and instead relies on the older, more business-friendly 2008 Fact Sheet #13 standard, according to a 2025 analysis from A&O Shearman. The DOL's own rulemaking page confirms the 2024 rule remains the technical standard for private litigation even while the agency itself has moved on.

The February 2026 proposal would make that shift permanent: it elevates two "core factors," a worker's control over their own schedule and assignments, and their opportunity for profit or loss through their own initiative, above the other four factors the 2024 rule weighed equally. For a relief veterinarian who sets their own available days, works for multiple practices, and isn't required to use the hiring practice's scheduling system, that shift toward core factors tends to favor contractor status. For one who works a fixed weekly schedule set by the practice and uses only the practice's systems and supplies, it does not.

Why California Treats Veterinarians Differently From Most Contractors

California's Dynamex decision and the AB 5 law that followed it created the ABC test, which presumes any worker is an employee unless the hiring business proves all three of: the worker is free from its control, the work falls outside the business's usual course of work, and the worker independently runs the same kind of business elsewhere. That third condition is nearly impossible for a relief veterinarian embedded in a practice's own patient care to satisfy on its face, which is why California's legislature carved out an exemption for licensed veterinarians (along with physicians, dentists, and a handful of other licensed professions), routing them instead to the older, thirteen-factor Borello test, according to an analysis of the exemption from Wilke Fleury LLP.

That exemption sounds like relief, but it is not a green light. Borello still presumes employee status and still requires a practice to prove otherwise across factors like who supplies equipment, whether the relief vet carries their own liability insurance, and whether they set their own hours across multiple clients.

The bottom line is that although AB 5 has been in effect for nearly three years, California veterinarians are still largely left guessing whether their classification is proper under the Borello standard.

Jizell Lopez

That uncertainty is the point: there is no bright-line test in California that clears a relief vet as a contractor just because the paperwork says so.

Where Else Classification Risk Runs High

California is not alone in applying the ABC test, and most ABC-test states do not carve out the same veterinarian exemption California does. Roughly a third of states use some version of the test, according to A&O Shearman's 2025 survey of state developments, and New Jersey's Department of Labor and Workforce Development has moved to formally codify how the burden of proof works under its own ABC test, putting the responsibility for proving contractor status squarely on the hiring business.

Jurisdiction	Test Applied	What It Means for Relief Staffing
Federal (FLSA)	Economic reality test, currently in flux	DOL enforcing the older Fact Sheet #13 standard since May 2025; a 2026 proposal would formalize a similar, more contractor-friendly test
California	Borello (veterinarians exempt from the ABC test)	Still presumes employee status; requires proving independence across 13 factors, not just one
New Jersey	ABC test	State labor department has proposed codifying the burden of proof onto the hiring practice
~33 states nationwide	ABC test or a close variant	Presumes employee status unless the practice proves all three prongs; most carry no veterinarian-specific exemption

Only a handful of ABC-test states carve out a licensed-profession exemption the way California does. In most others, a relief veterinarian who works exclusively within a practice's own patient care is presumed to be an employee from the outset.

What Misclassification Actually Costs a Practice

A relief vet's own preference for contractor status does not protect the practice that engaged them. If a state agency or court finds a worker was misclassified, the practice, not the worker, bears the exposure: back payroll taxes, unpaid overtime for hours the relief vet actually worked, retroactive workers' compensation premiums, and potential liability for benefits the worker would have been entitled to as an employee. None of that liability depends on whether both parties agreed to the 1099 arrangement in writing.

For a multi-location group running relief across several states, that risk compounds: a classification that holds up in a common-law state can fail entirely once the same relief vet crosses into an ABC-test one.

How a Private Relief Network Reduces the Classification Burden

Much of a practice's classification risk comes down to a documentation problem as much as a legal one: managing relief shifts internally without a system that separates true 1099 engagements from de facto scheduled employment makes it harder to show, after the fact, which factors actually applied to a given relief vet. Groove supports both 1099 and W2 relief arrangements in the same system, with timesheets, pay terms, and approval records kept per worker, which gives a practice something concrete to point to if a classification is ever challenged, rather than reconstructing shift history from texts and spreadsheets.

The Veterinary Practice Owner's Guide to Relief Worker Classification