Paul DeCamp Quoted in “3 Takeaways From 6th Circ.'s DOL Home Care Rule Decision”

Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Law360 Employment Authority, in “3 Takeaways From 6th Circ.'s DOL Home Care Rule Decision,” by Irene Spezzamonte. (Read the full version – subscription required.)

Following is an excerpt:

In a recent published opinion, an appellate panel said that a 2013 rule prohibiting third-party employers from claiming the companionship services or the live-in exemptions from the FLSA was a valid exercise of the DOL's authority. The finding came in the wake of the high court's 2024 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which tossed the Chevron deference that allowed courts to defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretation of ambiguities in a law.

Paul DeCamp, a DOL Wage and Hour Division administrator under former President George W. Bush, told Law360 that the decision could "take a little bit of the wind out of the sails" of the DOL's necessity to show why it wants to go ahead with a 2025 proposed rule on those home care exemptions.

DeCamp, a member of management-side firm Epstein Becker Green, said that he doesn't expect the ruling to affect the validity of the proposed rule.

"If anything, it does two things with regard to the proposal: It perhaps lessens the department's perceived need, as articulated in the preamble, to do something about the 2013 regulation," DeCamp said. "But the flip side of that is that if I were at the department, I would take the Sixth Circuit's decision as the green light to do pretty much whatever it wants, within reason." …

DeCamp said that the Sixth Circuit decision represents "a very specific fact of litigation going forward" as it tackled what weight to give to a precedent that was decided under Chevron.

"If we're talking about ... new regulations where there's no precedent on point from the Chevron era, then courts are going to do what Loper Bright says to do," DeCamp said. "But what to do about precedent that isn't automatically overturned in light of what the Supreme Court said in Loper Bright, that is a delicate issue."

DeCamp said that the Sixth Circuit's analysis "honors" the Loper Bright conclusion that the decisions reached under Chevron would still be valid.

"I think this case represents a very specific facet of litigation going forward, which is issues that come up where there is precedent on point decided under Chevron, and what weight to give to that precedent," DeCamp said.