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It has been less than a month since the Supreme Court overruled a 1984 case, Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, known as Chevron, which had given federal agencies the power to interpret statutes, and labor and employment policies are already seeing an impact.
In overturning the Chevron doctrine, a majority of justices on the high court indicated judges, rather than federal agencies, should interpret laws in cases where they aren’t clear. Citing the Administrative Procedure Act, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote courts “need not” and “may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”
The court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo doesn’t call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron doctrine, Roberts noted in his opinion. HR professionals should continue to follow rules and regulations as they stand, but should keep an eye out for new challenges to policies set by agencies such as the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Allan Bloom, a co-chair of law firm Proskauer’s labor and employment law department who represents employers and management, told HR Brew.
How the Chevron decision will affect labor and employment law. The end of Chevron deference is “going to result in many more challenges to agency rules and actions,” Bloom predicted. Specific laws that could be affected include the Fair Labor Standards Act, under which rules on everything from record-keeping to overtime pay to minimum wage fall. While courts would historically have deferred to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division to govern on these matters, that’s likely to change.
“You already see it happening,” Bloom said, noting that the DOL’s recently enacted rule raising the overtime threshold for white-collar workers was temporarily blocked for Texas state employees shortly after Chevron was overturned. The Supreme Court decision is also factoring into a separate case challenging the DOL’s statutory authority to set a minimum salary threshold to qualify for an exemption from overtime, currently pending in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Regulations such as the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) are also likely to be scrutinized under Loper Bright, Bloom said. A final rule for implementing the PWFA prompted lawsuits over the inclusion of abortion as a medical condition for which workers can seek accommodations. NLRB interpretations of federal labor law will likely be challenged, as well.
What this means for HR pros. As long as labor and employment statutes decided before Loper Bright remain in effect, HR pros shouldn’t change their day to day approach to complying with them, Bloom said. He advised keeping an eye on the changing legal landscape, though.
“I would stay the course, but the laws will change…in the coming years,” he predicted. “The way you do things in the workplace will change…because rules will be challenged and will be struck down.”