July 15, 2024
Several legal fights that will dominate the rest of 2024 are variations on the debate around who has the power to make and change laws and who is considered an employee, with the cases challenging the breadth of the U.S. Department of Labor’s rulemaking authority in the spotlight.
From multiple challenges to the DOL’s overtime and independent contractor rules to an imminent opinion on the fate of California’s Prop 22 and a Supreme Court case on the overtime exemption burden of proof, here are seven cases to watch in the latter half of the year.
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Burden of Proof on Overtime Exemptions
In a civil case concerning whether a worker is correctly classified as overtime exempt, the employer has the burden of proof. The question now before the U.S. Supreme Court is whether that burden is a preponderance of the evidence or, instead, clear and convincing.
The Fourth Circuit’s July 2023 opinion found that an employer, in this case a supermarket distributor, needed to show clear and convincing evidence to establish an exemption, a higher bar that is widely acknowledged to be out of step with sister circuits.
In fact, the U.S. Departments of Labor and Justice in an amicus brief urged the high court to simply summarily reverse the opinion.
That suggestion, interestingly, was ignored, said Christine Webber, a partner with worker side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and co-chair of its civil rights and employment practice.
“There may be interest in having the [Supreme Court] address the burden of proof for establishing exemptions more broadly than a summary reversal would permit,” she said, “or, less likely, that there is support for the Fourth Circuit’s standard.”
The case is E.M.D. Sales Inc. et al. v. Carrera et al., case number 23-217, in the Supreme Court of the United States.