Court Battles over Home Care Minimum Wage, Overtime Continue

​The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has filed an appeal in the lawsuit brought by home care provider associations challenging the final rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to nearly two million home care workers, according to a page on DOL's home care website. (See the September 27, 2013, Issues in Continuing Care Risk Management for more information on the final rule, which was supposed to become effective January 1, 2015.) On December 22, 2014, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the third-party regulation amended by the home care final rule (which barred third-party employers such as home care agencies whose employees provided companionship services from claiming exemption from minimum wage and overtime protections). Over the years, several bills proposing to prohibit third-party employers from claiming the exemptions had been introduced to Congress, the court noted, but none made it to a vote. The court characterized the final rule as a "thinly veiled effort to do through regulation what could not be done through legislation."