Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC office, was quoted in Law360, in “High Court Endorses Broader View Of FLSA Exemptions,” by Vin Gurrieri. (Read the full version – subscription required.)

Following is an excerpt:

Meanwhile, Paul DeCamp of Epstein Becker Green PC, formerly an administrator of the DOL’s wage and hour division under President George W. Bush, said the ruling could impact exemptions such as those for executive, administrative and professional employees, which he noted are not defined in the statute and are instead defined through regulations.

Although the narrow construction rule generally pertains to interpretations of statutory text, DeCamp noted courts have nevertheless used it to analyze both the FLSA’s text as well as regulations in cases where workers' eligibility for overtime were close calls. As a result, litigation involving interpretations of those regulations, like the white-collar exemptions, could be impacted in addition to statutory exemptions that are at all unclear.

“Every single exemption that is out there has potentially some gray area to it, at least at the margins,” DeCamp said. “It’s going to mean that the arguments made in litigation are going to be somewhat different now — the presumption is going to be somewhat different, [and] now it goes from there being a strong presumption of nonexempt status to it being back to in essence a preponderance status. ... I don’t think this is going to affect an enormous number of workers, [but] I think this is going to change litigation about exemptions in the gray area.”

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