adminA federal judge in Texas granted a preliminary injunction yesterday delaying implementation of a regulation that would extend overtime eligibility to an estimated 4.2 million workers. The injunction by Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee to the Eastern District of Texas in Sherman, TX, is temporary, but indicates he will eventually side with 21 state attorneys general and a coalition of business groups that sued to block the regulation.
The rule, previously set to take effect Dec. 1, would double (to $47,476) the salary threshold under which virtually all workers receive time-and-a-half pay whenever they work more than 40 hours in a given week. The Labor Department estimated the overtime rule would cost the nation’s businesses $295 million per year.
In his opinion, 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.
Read the full article at Politico.
