Unless the courts or federal lawmakers act, the minimum amount certain salaried employees will need to be paid to be exempt from overtime will increase dramatically as of December 1.
Although employers probably should act as if the change will occur as scheduled, several efforts are underway to challenge the Department of Labor’s new regulation.
First, officials from 21 states and more than 50 business groups filed two lawsuits in a federal court in Texas in September seeking to overturn the new regulation. Some legal experts think such lawsuits face an uphill battle, although they do say the challenge may put a halt to regulation’s annual increases (based on inflation) to the minimum amount exempt employees must receive.
Second, the U.S. House of Representatives this fall passed a bill that would delay the change in the overtime regulation for six months (presumably in the hopes that a new Administration would be less supportive of the increased minimum salary requirement). But that effort seems unlikely to succeed, given that similar legislation would have to be passed by the Senate and signed by the President (who has promised to veto any such legislation) in order to become law before the overtime change is slated to go into effect December 1.
John Yoswick