Overtime Rule Will Not Take Effect On December 1

A federal judge in Texas has issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Department of Labor’s revised overtime exemption rule from taking effect as scheduled on December 1, 2016.

As discussed in our May 18, 2016 E-lert, in order to be exempt from overtime, a white-collar employee must meet three tests: (1) the salary basis test – the employee must be paid on a salary basis, not subject to reductions for fluctuations in quantity or quality of work; (2) the salary level test – the employee’s salary must currently be at least $455 per week (equaling $23,660 per year); and (3) a duties test – the employee must perform certain duties specific to the executive, administrative or professional exemption in question.  There is also a highly-compensated employee exemption under which an employee must currently make at least $100,000 per year and perform at least one exempt duty.

The DOL’s revised rule would have doubled the salary requirement for white collar (executive, administrative and professional) employees from $23,660 per year ($455 per week) to $47,476 per year ($913 per week).  The required minimum salary for the highly compensated employees’ exemption would also have been raised from $100,000 to $134,004. These salary levels would have been subject to automatic adjustments every three years. The new rule did not change the duties test for any of the exemptions.

The new rule was challenged by 21 states and multiple business groups, arguing that such change was unlawful. In issuing the preliminary injunction, the judge agreed, noting that the rule change “creates essentially a de facto salary-only test,” which Congress had not intended.

What this means for employers is that no action need be taken to comply with the overtime rule by December 1 – in other words, those exempt employees who would have lost the exemption due to the increased salary level will retain their exempt status for the time being, absent further action by an appellate court. The judge’s ruling is preliminary in nature, but the ruling indicates that the states and industry groups have “a likelihood of success” ultimately.