If you thought 2024 brought a lot of shakeup to the legal landscape for employers, nothing could have prepared you for the vast disarray that has been the first eight weeks of 2025. Over the past decade, it has become increasingly challenging for employers to stay focused and diligent due to the introduction of dozens of laws and regulations aimed at increasing employee rights in the workplace. This has made it inherently difficult for some employers to ensure compliance. Additionally, in the years since the 2020 George Floyd murder, we saw an even greater emphasis on integrating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across all aspects of an employee’s lifecycle from recruiting to opportunities for advancement and beyond. Then last year, we saw very public attacks against diversity and inclusion programs, significant changes to overtime laws, an increase in the number of states enacting pay transparency laws, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act going into effect and, of course, the hotly contested almost-abolishment of noncompete laws, among many other new or changing laws and regulations impacting the workforce. But the end of 2024 may have given us a glimpse into where we are today when, in November, 2024, a federal district judge in Texas struck down those overtime law changes. With employment laws rapidly changing again and again, it is imperative that employers remain calm and focused in order to navigate these murky waters so that there is as little disruption to the workplace as possible. While there are many pressing hot-button issues in the employment sphere right now (complying with the new administration’s recent immigration reform deserves an entire article devoted to that issue alone), let’s take a deeper look into just some of these areas to hopefully aid employers in finding the calm among the chaos.
Overtime Law Reverts Back to 2019 Rules
