A Texas district judge’s ruling issuing a temporary injunction halting implementation of the Department of Labor’s overtime rule was an “error of law,” the department says in a brief filed Thursday with an appeals court.

The overtime rule would have raised the threshold for overtime-exempt employees to $913 a week, or $47,476 annually for a full-time employee, from the current $455 a week, or $23,660 annually.

But on Nov. 22, Judge Amos L. Mazzant III of U.S. District Court in Sherman, Texas, issued a preliminary injunction halting the rule’s Dec. 1 implementation.  The Department of Labor then filed an appeal with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans asking for an expedited briefing schedule in the case.

The appeals court issued a schedule calling for briefs in the case to be submitted by Jan. 31, which means oral arguments in the case would not be heard before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

Mr. Trump’s selection for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, criticized the rule in an article in Forbes magazine in May, and it is expected that the DOL will not pursue the case under his leadership.

On Dec. 9, the Austin-based Texas AFL-CIO filed a motion to intervene in the case as a defendant, which means it would replace the Labor Department as a defendant should it withdraw. The District Court has not yet ruled on this motion.

In its appeals court brief filed Thursday, the Department of Labor states that for more than 75 years, to be treated as exempt from overtime, employees must be paid on a salary basis, receive a specified salary, and have primarily executive, administrative or professional duties.

In its ruling in State of Nevada et al. v. United States Department of Labor et al., the District Court held that the overtime exemption’s applicability “must be determined by an analysis of an employee’s job duties alone, without regard to salary,” said the brief.

However, the DOL says, “Under the final rule, as under the Department’s prior regulations, the salary-level test properly works together with the duties test and the salary-basis test to identify bona fide (executive, administrative and professional) employees who do not receive the (Fair Labor Standards Act) protections.

“The District Court didn’t offer any persuasive basis to overturn the approach that has been used for the past 75 years by the agency charged with implementing the FLSA,” said the brief, in arguing Judge Mazzant’s preliminary injunction should be reversed.