Kansas has joined Texas, Nevada, and 18 other states in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Labor regarding upcoming changes to the minimum salary threshold for the so-called “white collar” overtime exemption.  The new Department of Labor rules go into effect on December 1, 2016, and raise the salary threshold for executive, administrative, or professional employees from $23,660 per year to $47,476 per year, meaning that as of December 1, 2016, employers would have to pay those “white collar” employees making less than $47,476 overtime for any time worked in excess of 40 hours per week.

The lawsuit is targeted at the application of the salary threshold rule to states and their employees.   In their Complaint the states claim that the new rule unfairly targets state funds and depletes state resources.  The states criticize the rule’s mechanism for increasing the threshold automatically every three years.  Although the states do ask in their Complaint that the rule be set aside and allude to the possibility of asking for a temporary injunction that would prohibit the Department of Labor from enforcing the new rule before it goes into effect, at this point in time, employers in Kansas and the other 20 states should plan to accommodate the new rule in December.