US Supreme Court Refuses Stay Overtime Rules - 10/7/2015

On October 6, 2015 the United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to issue a stay of the Department of Labor (DOL) overtime rules that impact home health workers.  It is expected that the new DOL rules will go into effect on October 13^th.

This rule placed restriction by not allowing home health care workers employed by a third party to qualify for the companionship exemption.  This requires home health agencies to pay overtime for all caregivers paid on an hourly basis and who do not quality as exempt salary employees. 

On September 14^th the DOL stated the ruling would go into effect on October 13, 2015.  They also stated that they would exercise prosecutorial discretion in determining whether to bring enforcement actions through December 31, 2015.  This is not a promise by the DOL not to enforce the rules until that date.  The enforcement is up to the DOL based on how the individual companies have made good faith efforts to bring their compensation programs into compliance with the law.

We recommend you immediately plan to comply with the above ruling.  We do not believe you should wait, since failure to comply could place a substantial financial risk on your company.