Judge Amos Mazzant of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has decided that he will not halt the lawsuit challenging the U.S. DOL’s new overtime exemption rules pending a ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on his earlier order temporarily blocking the rules from taking effect. Here’s a quick recap … Continue Reading
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 entitled to … Continue Reading
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 14 … Continue Reading
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 from taking … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
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’ claims. According to … Continue Reading
By Guest Author: Michael A. Warner, Jr. In recent years, one tactic for attempting to defeat wage and hour class and collective action lawsuits class action lawsuits has been to offer the named plaintiffs full relief for their individual claims in the case. Even if the offer is declined, the theory goes, the offer renders … Continue Reading
If a tree falls in the forest but there is no one around to hear, does it make a sound? If a non-exempt worker answers an e-mail message after hours on her Blackberry but fails to put in for overtime, has she performed compensable work? While I’m not aware of any firm legal authority on … Continue Reading
As you have read in our blog over the years, the misclassification of employees as exempt is one of the primary claims in wage and hour litigation. Misclassification claims can arise in many forms, including the classification of a certain job in a particular industry. Mortgage loan officers anyone? Today’s post is focused on the … Continue Reading
The Department of Labor (DOL) promulgated a rule that brings home care workers, employed by third parties, within the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). As a result, those home care workers employed by an entity other than the individual, or the family of the individual for whom they are caring, will be … Continue Reading
Last week, the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to Tyson Foods in an appeal of a class and collective action filed under the FLSA and a similar Iowa state law. Hourly workers at Tyson’s Storm Lake, Iowa pork processing plant filed a lawsuit claiming unpaid overtime for time spent donning and doffing personal … Continue Reading
The Supreme Court has declined to grant review of a Sixth Circuit decision that cast significant doubt on the effectiveness of an employee’s waiver of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action rights. Last summer, the Sixth Circuit became the first federal appellate court to address an employee’s waiver of rights to participate in a … Continue Reading
On April 20, the Second Circuit filled a gap left open by the Supreme Court by extending the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) anti-retaliation provisions to oral complaints made to an employer (rather than just complaints made to a government agency). In Greathouse v. JHS Security, Inc., the appeals court cited both Supreme Court precedent … Continue Reading
Periodically this year, we have discussed some of the fundamentals of wage and hour law, starting with a general review of the white collar exemptions. We will continue to periodically review some of the more fundamental concepts of the FLSA, including a comprehensive review of the new FLSA exemption rules that we expect the DOL … Continue Reading
Reversing a district court decision, and declining to follow decisions from a number of other courts, including the Fourth and Fifth Circuits, the Ninth Circuit has deferred to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) “flip-flopped” view of whether the FLSA’s exemption for “any salesman, partsman, or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing automobiles,” applies to … Continue Reading
It happens every year: I read a decision from a federal judge about the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and shake my head that it actually took litigation to resolve such an obvious question. It is only March, but 2015 already is no different. A recent decision by a federal district judge in New York … Continue Reading
Recently, the Maryland Court of Appeals took the position, albeit in dicta, that the state’s Wage Payment and Collection Law reflects a “strong” public policy of Maryland and urged Maryland courts to reject as unenforceable any future out-of-state forum selection provisions contained in employment agreements. While just one decision, employers with Maryland-based employees should review … Continue Reading
In many ways, federal immigration laws and various labor and employment laws, including the FLSA, may appear fundamentally at odds with each other: prohibiting work by undocumented workers on one hand, but allowing them to recover damages when they are not paid work on the other. We have examined this issue with state laws in … Continue Reading
In a case we labeled one of the “cases to watch” this term, a relatively unified Supreme Court decided in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association that a federal agency does not need to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) before it can significantly alter an interpretive rule of an agency … Continue Reading
Last summer, we highlighted an example of how good recordkeeping practices can result in a favorable decision. In the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan case, the employer successfully defended an “unauthorized overtime” claim where an employee worked off the clock against Kaiser’s policies and without its knowledge. A recent Eleventh Circuit decision demonstrates the limits of … Continue Reading
The dawning of a new year means it is time to look back at the number of cases filed in federal courts during the past year under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Every year seemingly without fail, that number goes up. 2014 was no exception. According to figures from PACER, litigants filed a total of … Continue Reading
Recently, I read about a construction contractor in Los Angeles caught in the middle of litigation between its subcontractors and the city, on behalf of the subcontractor’s former employees. According to the employees, the subcontractors had allegedly promised to pay them the prevailing wage for that area of $49.00 per hour, but had only paid … Continue Reading
In October, we profiled Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, a case asking whether time spent in security screenings is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Warehouse workers sued Integrity Staffing under the FLSA for uncompensated time they were required to spend in lengthy security screenings (lasting up to 25 minutes) at the … Continue Reading
As we discussed recently, this month marked the opening of the Supreme Court’s new term. For employment law practitioners, this session will be particularly busy with seven cases analyzing a range of employment questions, from the scope of the EEOC’s duty to conciliate discrimination claims to the applicability of whistleblower protection laws and the Pregnancy … Continue Reading
