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Paley Rothman shares this library of resources with clients and friends of the firm to help them stay ahead of legal and business developments and trends. Here, you will find helpful tips and tools written by our attorneys. The information in the blogs and articles is not a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied on as such. Should you have any questions or want legal advice, please contact the attorney who wrote the blog or article.

Employment Law

Status Update on the New Overtime Rules

Earlier this week, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking comments regarding the rules that establish which employees can be exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime pay requirements.  This request, combined with the DOL’s latest position in the key case challenging the version of the overtime rules that were finalized by the DOL last May, strongly suggest that the new overtime rules will never go into effect but that other changes to the preexisting rules may be forthcoming.

The events that have transpired related to the new overtime rules up to this week’s RFI can be summarized as follows:

Now, through the RFI, the DOL is seeking comment from the public to help it determine where to go from here.  In the RFI, the DOL acknowledges that the salary threshold set by the new rule was too high.  The DOL states that it is seeking feedback on how to revise the new rules “including whether the standard salary level set in that rule effectively identifies employees who may be exempt, whether a different salary level would more appropriately identify such employees, the basis for setting a different salary level, and why a different salary level would be more appropriate or effective.”

So what does this all mean for employers? The rulemaking process that the DOL would need to engage in to change the new overtime rules can be an arduous and slow moving one.  We ultimately expect that the DOL’s efforts will result in changes to the preexisting overtime rules.  This will likely include some increase to the salary threshold which Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta has said he supports.   However, we certainly do not expect to see increases to the salary thresholds as high as those set by the new overtime rules, and, given that DOL is no longer defending them in court, it is unlikely that the new rules with the higher threshold will ever go into effect.