Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water….  The Department of Labor has filed an Appeal to the injunction.  Federal Judge Amos Mazzant of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled with a nationwide injunction.  The ruling stopped the implementation of the overtime changes that were to take effect on December 1st. Cheers and Jeers were heard across America.

Now we wait to see how fast this case is heard and what will happen.  Lawyers and experts have said that Judge Mazzant would not have stopped the rule from moving forward unless he thought the 21 states in the lawsuit had a strong case.

With the holidays coming, this appeal will either be rushed or pushed off until the beginning of the year.  As an HR person, I feel like up is down and down is up lately. Everything that the experts thought would happen did not.  I assured everyone mid-year that the $50,000 would be brought down to $35,000 because that seemed reasonable. Wrong. I was certain there would be no injunction because Judge Mazzant was appointed by President Obama and the Department of Labor surely felt confident they were within the law. Wrong again.  Then all the experts told us this was dead until the new administration.  Seriously, Wrong Again!

My hope is that the threshold is revisited to a reasonable rate and this is put off until that can happen.  Reasonable doesn’t seem to be the norm though.  I’m having flashbacks of the first year of Obamacare and the last minute implementations, changes and cancellations.  No one seems to worry about the time it takes to implement, stop and implement these changes again.  My Christmas wish is that they don’t do this the week of Christmas. I hope they get this resolved or give us a timeline next week.  But I won’t hold my breath.  I promise to keep you up to date! #herewegoagain #overtimechanges #departmentoflabor #hrisnotfunindecember

Here is the link to the Appeal for your enjoyment.