Court Issues Nationwide Preliminary Injunction of DOL’s Overtime Rules Effective Dec 1

In Federal Court Rules New Overtime Requirements Won’t Go Into Effect on December 1, our colleague Scott Flick discusses the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas’ ruling in a civil action challenging the Department of Labor’s (DOL) new overtime regulations. The civil action that was brought by the State of Nevada and 20 other states and recently consolidated with a related civil action brought by the Plano Chamber of Congress and over 50 other business organizations. Today, in response to a motion filed by states, the District Court granted a nationwide preliminary injunction, preventing the new salary threshold (and scheduled increases to it in future years) from going into effect until the District Court has had an opportunity to rule on the legality of the rule change. Effective December 1, the Final Rule would have, among other things, increased the minimum salary level for exempt employees from $455 per week ($23,660 annually) to $921 per week ($47,892 annually). In its ruling, the District Court made it clear that the DOL will have a hard time defending the rule change.