Just a quick update on a couple of our recent stories for you wage and hour litigation junkies:
Back on December 5, a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of a case in which two former University of Pennsylvania student athletes claimed that they and other intercollegiate athletes were employees
The pending court fight between the U.S. DOL and a coalition of states and business groups over the new overtime exemption rules will not be resolved before President Obama leaves office in January, even though the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has now granted the DOL’s motion to set an expedited briefing schedule on its
Back in August, the National Labor Relations Board threw the higher education community a curve ball ruling that student assistants at Columbia University were employees under the National Labor Relations Act, and were therefore entitled to organize a union. (For more information see our alert on the case.) An obvious question left unanswered by the Columbia University case was whether and under what circumstances students may also be entitled to minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. On Monday, December 5, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in on at least part of that issue, holding that two former University of Pennsylvania athletes were not employees of either the University or the NCAA under the FLSA. Berger v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al.
Historical Context
The FLSA itself is distinctly unhelpful in assessing when students might be treated as employees, as it defines “employee” as “any individual employed by an employer,” and “employer” as “any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee.” The statute goes on to define “employ” as “to suffer or permit to work.”
Taken literally, that exceedingly broad definition would seem to sweep in all students who perform anything one could describe as “work.” That could include, for example, students who build sets in the drama department, run the student radio station, or do research work as part of a graduate program. However, the U.S. Supreme Court long ago rejected such a sweeping interpretation of the FLSA, holding in Walling v. Portland Terminal Co. that the FLSA “cannot be interpreted so as to make a person whose work serves only his own interest an employee of another person who gives him aid and instruction.”
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Says Student Athletes Are Not Employees
It looks like the U.S. Department of Labor’s appeal of the order blocking the new overtime exemption rules won’t be decided before President Obama leaves office. Under the Court of Appeals’ regular rules, the DOL’s opening brief would have been due in mid-January, followed by the response brief 30 days later, and the DOL’s reply
Sorry employers, the ride’s not over yet. For those of you keeping track, the U.S. Department of Labor’s new overtime exemption rules were set to go into effect yesterday, December 1, 2016. However, on November 22, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the rules
Yesterday, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas dealt employers yet another surprise in this season of upsets with its decision in State of Nevada v. U.S. Department of Labor, halting the implementation of the DOL’s new FLSA overtime exemption rules, which were set to take effect December 1,
Well folks, looks like all that work we did to get ready for the new exemption rules taking effect 12/1 was just for fun. A federal court just blocked the rules from taking effect nationwide. This is just in so we haven’t had a chance to digest the opinion yet, but here it is if
This is a post I certainly didn’t expect to be writing even 12 hours ago, but now that the results of the election are clear, it’s time to give some thought to what lies ahead under the forthcoming Trump administration. Details will of course start to emerge over the next couple of months, but I
In our last post we reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and fifty-plus other business groups suing to block the U.S. DOL’s overtime exemption rule from taking effect had not yet moved to expedite the court’s ruling on the case, making it unlikely that the court would issue any sort of ruling before the
On September 20 we reported about a lawsuit by 21 states seeking to block the U.S. DOL’s new overtime exemption rules. This week, the states followed up their complaint by filing an Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction, asking the court to block enforcement of the new rule pending a final ruling on the states’