Yesterday, a federal judge in Texas granted an emergency injunction against the U.S. Department of Labor’s overtime rule previously set to take effect December 1, delaying implementation of a regulation that would extend overtime eligibility to an estimated 4.2 million workers.
As finalized by the DOL in May, the rule would double the salary threshold eligibility from the current $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to $913 per week ($47,476 per year) and automatically update the salary threshold every three years, based on wage growth over time. The Labor Department estimated the overtime rule would cost the nation’s businesses $295 million per year.
In his opinion, Judge Amos Mazzant said that in issuing the rule, the Labor Department “exceeds its delegated authority and ignores Congress’s intent by raising the minimum salary threshold such that it supplants the duties test.” Under the duties test, an employee is exempt from overtime pay if he or she earns wages in excess of the salary threshold and has duties that are administrative, executive or professional. Mazzant said that “if Congress intended the salary requirement to supplant the duties test, then Congress and not the Department, should make that change.”
Read the full opinion here.