By Anne G. Bibeau, Esq.
Vandeventer Black LLP
A federal court has enjoined the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) salary increase. The court’s order, entered on November 22, 2016, is a nationwide preliminary injunction. As a result, employers do not have to comply with the new FLSA salary threshold on December 1, 2016.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule on May 17, 2016, increasing the FLSA’s salary threshold. The final rule, which was to go into effect on December 1, 2016, would have increased the salary threshold for the FLSA white collar exemptions from $23,660 per year to $47,476 per year, and the annual compensation threshold for the “highly compensated” exemption from $100,000 per year to $134,004 per year. Had the new rule gone into effect, any employee paid less than $47,476 per year would have been eligible for overtime pay. The DOL’s final rule also provided for automatic adjustments to the salary and highly compensated threshold every three years. Employers who have been grappling with whether to give raises to employees paid less than $47,476, or budget for increased overtime costs, or hire additional personnel to reduce overtime hours, may now lay their concerns aside. The FLSA is not changing on December 1, 2016, after all.
Twenty-one states and over fifty business organizations filed suit to stop the DOL’s final rule. Their suits were consolidated in the United States District ¬¬Court for the Eastern District of Texas. In its preliminary injunction, that Court ruled that the DOL exceeded its authority by raising the salary threshold level so high that it supplanted the “duties tests” for the FLSA white collar exemptions. The court stated that the DOL “create[d] essentially a de facto salary-only test,” thus subverting the importance of the FLSA exemptions’ duties tests. The Court also found that the DOL did not have authority to create an automatic adjustment to the salary threshold.
The injunction is preliminary, but it signals that the Court is likely to issue a permanent injunction later. The Court’s decision is the second recent defeat for President Obama’s agenda: just last month, the same federal Court in Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking the federal contractor “blacklisting” regulations. See Vandeventer Black’s Legal Alert on that topic here.