NASHVILLE—Today, the U.S. Department of Labor will formally publish a final rule overturning the Biden administration’s 2024 overtime rule after multiple federal courts vacated the rule nationwide and the department declined to continue defending it on appeal.
In 2024, the Beacon Center of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Association of Christian Schools International, challenging the overtime rule, which would have required employers to either convert many salaried employees into hourly workers or absorb substantial new payroll costs.
Beacon argued that the department lacked statutory authority to issue the rule, which threatened to impose significant new costs and compliance burdens on employers across the country, including nonprofits, schools, ministries, and small businesses throughout Tennessee.
Beacon voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit last week after the department, under the new administration, dropped its appeals in other cases challenging the rule. Federal courts in Texas had previously vacated the rule nationwide, and those decisions became final after the government abandoned further appellate review.
The department’s final rule removes the unlawful overtime mandate from federal regulations to avoid unnecessary confusion to the public. The rule specifically acknowledges our lawsuit, Association of Christian Schools International v. U.S. Department of Labor, among the legal challenges brought against the overtime mandate. This decision benefits roughly 250,000 Tennesseans and the employers who support them.
“We are pleased that the federal government has dropped its defense of the unlawful overtime rule,” said Wen Fa, Vice President of Legal Affairs at Beacon. “Our client and the Christian schools it represents can now spend the resources that it would have taken to comply with ever-shifting mandates from federal bureaucrats to provide an even better education to students at Christian schools.”
