Department of Labor

Subscribe to Department of Labor

The U.S. Department of Labor announced today that it will reinstate the Department’s long-standing practice of issuing opinion letters to employers and employees regarding application of the Fair Labor Standards Act.   The Obama Administration eliminated opinion letters in favor of broader “Administrator Interpretations,” but those were few and far between.   “The letters were a division…

An online ticket broker that sells tickets to concerts, sporting events, and the theater qualifies as a “retail or service establishment” under Section 207(i) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), Judge John Lee of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held. Blahnik v. Box Office Ticket Sales, LLC,…

The appeal regarding the validity of the federal overtime rule will not be fully briefed until May 1, 2017, according to an order issued by the Fifth Circuit on February 22, 2017, granting an unopposed request by the Department of Justice for an extension.

When the Department of Labor first appealed the nationwide injunction issued…

In the latest round in the litigation between 21 States, led by the State of Nevada, and the Department of Labor regarding the Final Rule, the State Plaintiffs filed their appeal brief today with the Fifth Circuit, urging the Court to affirm the district court’s order, which issued a nationwide injunction blocking the rule.  “As …

Sen. Bernie Sanders, along with twenty-five other members of Congress, have filed an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals urging the Court to reverse the injunction issued by a Texas federal judge enjoining enforcement of the Department of Labor’s recent increase to the salary basis threshold for the white collar exemptions under…

The Texas AFL-CIO recently filed a motion to intervene as a defendant in the action filed against the Department of Labor (DOL) regarding its highly publicized regulation expanding overtime coverage. Fearing the DOL under President-Elect Donald Trump might abandon its appeal to the Fifth Circuit of a nationwide preliminary injunction issued by a Texas District…

On December 1, 2016, the Department of Labor appealed the district court’s preliminary injunction ruling.  It is expected that the DOL will request the Fifth Circuit to rule on the appeal quickly, but the Fifth Circuit may not grant this request, and the appeal may not be resolved prior to January 20, 2017.  If the …

Following a pair of lawsuits aimed at blocking the Labor Department’s “white collar” overtime rule, House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections Chair Tim Walberg (R-Michigan) introduced legislation which would delay the rule’s effective date by six months, from December 1, 2016, to June 1, 2017.  The proposed legislation, entitled The Regulatory Relief for Small Businesses, Schools,…

While Department of Labor regulations interpreting the FLSA remain the primary source of employer guidance regarding the Act’s requirements, they are not necessarily the final word on what federal wage law requires. This is so even where they have been subject to “notice and comment,” triggering a higher level of judicial deference.  A federal court…