Fictional hypothetical on employee misclassification in the US

Suppose that following the resignation of a W-2 employee, the employer replaces them with an independent contractor. The contractor does the exact same work the W-2 employee was doing. Would this be a clear-cut case of employee misclassification? Is there any obvious caveat that would prevent it from being so? For the purposes of this hypothetical, assume it occurs in a state with fairly strong labor laws.

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