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States see overtime rule as ‘backdoor’ minimum wage hike

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States see overtime rule as ‘backdoor’ minimum wage hike

The executive branch is trying to wield its proposed overtime rule “as a battering-ram to force a species of minimum wage through the backdoor, without Congressional approval,” say 21 states in a brief filed with an appeals court on Wednesday.

The brief filed by 21 states with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is in response to the U.S. Department of Labor’s appeal of a federal district court’s Nov. 22 preliminary injunction halting the overtime rule’s Dec. 1 implementation.

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, compared with the current $455 a week, or $23,660 annually.

On Jan. 3, Judge Amos L. Mazzant III in Sherman, Texas, who had issued the preliminary injunction, refused to stay proceedings in the case pending his ruling’s appeal to the 5th Circuit.

The brief filed on behalf of 21 states on Tuesday says, “If the new overtime rule can proceed, the states and our constitutional structure will suffer irreparable harm on a massive scale.

 “As a consequence of the level’s steep increase, tens of thousands of state employees (and millions of private employees) … will have their overtime-exempt status eliminated, with no change in their actual duties, based solely upon a salary amount that the federal government forces state officials to pay them.”

The case filed by the states was consolidated in the district court with a parallel case filed by private business plaintiffs. They are participating in the 5th Circuit appeal as amici.

The Trump administration is widely expected to withdraw the Department of Labor’s appeal to the 5th Circuit, although there has been speculation in recent days that President-elect Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Labor, Andrew Puzder, is considering withdrawing his nomination because of the controversy it has generated.

 

 

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