Officials from 21 states, including Louisiana, sued the U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday over a new rule that would make about 4 million higher-earning workers eligible for overtime pay, slamming the measure as inappropriate federal overreach by the Obama Administration.
The Associated Press reports Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas, urging the court to block implementation before the regulation takes effect on Dec. 1.
Laxalt, a frequent critic of President Barack Obama’s policies, says the rule would burden private and public sectors by straining budgets and forcing layoffs or cuts in working hours.
“This rule, pushed by distant bureaucrats in D.C., tramples on state and local government budgets, forcing states to shift money from other important programs to balance their budgets, including programs intended to protect the very families that purportedly benefit from such federal overreach,” he says in a statement.
The measure would shrink the so-called “white collar exemption” that exempts workers who perform “executive, administrative or professional” duties from overtime and minimum wage requirements.
It would more than double the salary threshold under which employers must pay overtime to their white collar workers. Overtime protections would apply to workers who make up to $913 a week, or $47,476 a year, and the threshold would readjust every three years to reflect changes in average wages.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says the new rule would hurt the Louisiana workforce in the education, retail, government, health, hospitality, and professional service industries.
“For their sake and the sake of federalism, I have joined Attorneys General from across the country to stop this job-killer,” Landry says in a statement.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez says he was confident in the legality of the rule, describing the lawsuits as partisan, obstructionist tactics. He notes that overtime protections have receded over the years: they applied to 62% of full-time salaried workers in 1975 and just 7% today.
“The overtime rule is designed to restore the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the crown jewel of worker protections in the United States,” Perez says in a statement.
Louis Reine, the Louisiana AFL-CIO president, has called the update regulation a win for workers, but some Baton Rouge business owners have expressed concerned.
“Mall shops, pizzerias, ice cream shops will close—or raise prices,” Mitch Rotolo, owner of Rotolo’s Pizzeria, told Business Report earlier this summer when the rule was announced. “It’s going to kill the economy, kill business and employees. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Earlier this month, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry asked Perez to delay implementation of the overtime pay rule in 22 Louisiana parishes impacted by the August flooding.
Tuesday’s lawsuit came the same day that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and more than 50 other business groups filed a legal challenge against the regulation. Other plaintiffs include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, and the governors of Iowa, Maine and New Mexico.
