(Photo by Peter Foley for Reuters)
On Friday a federal judge in Texas struck down a new rule from the Biden administration aimed at extending overtime protections to millions of workers.
Judge Sean D. Jordan of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that the Labor Department went beyond its authority in issuing the regulation earlier this year. He granted summary judgment to the state of Texas, which had sued to stop the rule from taking effect.
The overtime rule is one of the furthest-reaching economic reforms that President Joe Biden has pursued unilaterally through the federal rulemaking process. It would dramatically expand the share of workers who are entitled to time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week.
But thanks to court battles like the one in Texas, the regulation’s future was in doubt even before Donald Trump, who has broadly promised to undo Biden’s agenda, won the presidential election.
Jordan, who Trump nominated to the bench in 2019 during his first term in the White House, had temporarily blocked the overtime rule from moving forward in Texas in June. His latest order halts the regulation across the country, leaving the current, stricter overtime rules intact.
A Labor Department spokesperson did not immediately comment on the agency’s plans for the rule. The agency can appeal Jordan’s order in hopes of keeping the rule alive, but defending it will ultimately fall to the incoming Trump administration. A Trump campaign spokesperson had declined to say where Trump stands on the Biden rule when HuffPost asked in September.
Most hourly workers are entitled to time-and-a-half pay when they work extra hours, but the rules are different for workers paid on salary. Biden is trying to raise what’s known as the overtime salary threshold, the level below which most salaried workers are automatically guaranteed overtime pay.
Trump had set the threshold at just $35,568 during his first term. Biden’s rule would push it to $58,656 next year, so that the threshold covers an estimated 4 million additional workers. The threshold would have been indexed to rise with inflation after that.
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Leading employer groups had come out strongly against the Biden rule, just as they did when former President Barack Obama tried to expand overtime protections to more workers. After all, raising the salary threshold would raise workers’ pay, and thus employers’ labor costs.
The Associated Builders and Contractors, which represents the construction industry, was among the groups cheering Jordan’s decision to strike down the rule. It said workers would have lost out on the “flexibility” afforded to managers and others on salary who are exempted from the law.
“This would have disrupted the construction industry, specifically harming small businesses, restricting employee workplace flexibility in setting schedules and hours, and hurting career advancement opportunities,” Ben Brubeck, the group’s vice president for regulatory and labor affairs, said in a statement.
