Federal Judges Rule On Employment And Labor Regulations

As Connecting the Dots readers will recall, earlier this year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a rule that would prohibit noncompete agreements between employers and their workers. The regulation is set to go into effect September 4, 2024, but in a 33-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ada E. Brown said the FTC does not have the authority to set rules governing competition issues.

The rule is, therefore, stayed — but only for the entities that challenged the regulation in federal court. Those organizations include the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but not their individual member companies. Still, the ruling is significant and will boost opponents’ efforts to stop this harmful rulemaking.

As a reminder, the Metals Service Center Institute has asked the FTC to delay implementation for all affected organizations. Read more about those efforts here.

A similar stay was recently issued for the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) final overtime regulation. District Court Judge Sean Jordan temporarily barred DOL from enforcing the rules on the grounds that the agency’s design of them was overly reliant on a worker’s salary level, rather than their job duties. That ruling only applies to the government of the state of Texas, however, which sued to stop the rule. Again, while the court’s decision does not apply to all employers, it is important since Judge Jordan is also overseeing an overtime-rule case brought by business groups.

Click here to read more about his ruling. As a reminder, the DOL’s broadened overtime regulation raises the salary threshold from about $35,500 to $58,656 to determine worker overtime pay.