In a brief court filing on Tuesday, the Trump Administration dropped its appeal of the injunction preventing the Obama Administration’s new overtime rule from going into effect.
The new overtime rule, which was supposed to have gone into effect last December, would have raised the “salary level test” for executive, administrative, and professional workers from $455 per week to $913 per week. A federal judge in Texas issued a nation-wide injunction in November preventing the rule from taking effect. The injunction order called into question both the appropriateness of the amount of the new salary level test, as well as the Department of Labor’s authority to establish a salary level test at all. In its appeal of the injunction, the Trump Administration backed away from the $913 amount, but defended the authority to establish a salary level test. Last week, the district court judge issued a new order in which he struck down the new overtime rule, but did not disturb the government’s authority to establish a salary level test.
The Department of Justice now says that in light of the order striking down the rule, its appeal is “moot.”
This action indicates the end of the road for the Obama Administration’s overtime rule. But it’s not the end of the story. In July, the Department of Labor issued a new Request for Information seeking input on possible changes to the overtime rules. The comment period on this request is open through September 25. The Department of Labor has suggested that new rulemaking on overtime will be coming in the future.