Attorney General Ken Paxton blocked the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) from instituting a regulation that would have restructured overtime requirements in violation of federal law.
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay overtime compensation, but the law exempts several categories of employees, including “any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity.” In 2016, DOL promulgated a rule that conditioned the exemptions on an employee’s salary, not an employee’s duties, as the statute requires. Attorney General Paxton successfully sued and the court vacated the unlawful rule in 2017.
The Biden-Harris Administration then attempted to revive this illegal policy by republishing the 2016 rule with only minor changes. In June 2024, Attorney General Paxton challenged the new rule under the Administrative Procedure Act for exceeding the scope of the law and being arbitrary and capricious. Now, the unlawful rule has been vacated and set aside following Attorney General Paxton’s lawsuit.
“Once again we have stopped an out-of-control federal agency from unilaterally rewriting the law to suit the Biden-Harris Administration’s unconstitutional agenda,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Texas defeated this unlawful policy in court for a second time.”
Attorney General Paxton has led the nation in opposing the federal government’s abuses of power, recently filing his 100th legal action against the Biden-Harris Administration. He was the first state attorney general to secure a favorable ruling against the Biden-Harris Administration in January 2021 when he sued the federal government just two days into the new presidential term and challenged the unlawful pause on illegal alien deportations. In the years that followed, Attorney General Paxton sued the Biden Administration over frequent violations of the Constitution, winning more than three out of every four lawsuits filed against the Administration.
To read the decision, click here.
To read the final judgment, click here.