Eric Glatt, a second-year Georgetown University law school student, got the attention of interns and employers when, after working as an unpaid intern on the hit 2010 film Black Swan, he and fellow intern Alexander Footman filed suit against the movie company, Fox Searchlight Pictures, on grounds that not paying them was a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The lawsuit was filed in September 2011 in federal court in Manhattan, where the film was shot. Last month Judge William H. Pauley III ruled on the side of Glatt and Footman. He said the work they performed did not meet the government’s standard for unpaid internships, meaning more educational and vocational, and most of all benefiting them. Instead, he said, their duties were as regular employees in jobs that benefited the movie studio. Fox Searchlight is in the process of submitting an appeal, but regardless, the case opened the floodgates on an issue that Glatt says is particularly relevant to Washington, where he claims there are more unpaid interns than anywhere in the US. He says these unpaid interns are victims of “wage theft.”