Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas imposed a nationwide injunction against the Obama Administration's "overtime" rule (the subject of prior NCISS issue alerts).

The Labor Department regulation raised the salary threshold for receiving mandatory overtime from $23,660 to $47,476 a year, or from $455 to $913 a week.  The rule, set to take effect Dec. 1, 2016, was expected to cost American businesses $12 billion a year over the next decade.

Judge Mazzant held that the Labor Department regulation exceeded the authority granted it by Congress, which he said gave Labor the right to define which workers are considered salaried but only based on the duties they performed, not by how much they made.

The judge added that the impact of the law was so great that the power to make it would have to be expressly delegated to the Labor Department by Congress, not implicitly granted as the Obama administration had argued.

 "Congress defined the ... exemption with regard to duties, which does not include a minimum salary level," Judge Mazzant wrote. "The Department's role is to carry out Congress's intent. If Congress intended the salary requirement to supplant the duties test, then Congress, and not the Department, should make that change."  

Let's hope that the courts will act similarly with other Labor Department Rules!

Thanks to our legislative advocates at