A piece of good news for employers – after waiting nearly a year and a half to see what would happen with the Department of Labor’s new Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations on overtime exemptions, the litigation over the updated regs has ended and the rule will not go into effect.

In May, 2016, the DOL issued a Final Rule governing overtime exemptions under the FLSA. The Rule, if put into effect, would have required that an employee be paid $913 per week, or $47,476 annually (up from $455 per week, $23,660 annually) to be exempt from overtime pay requirements. In addition, to qualify for the “highly compensated” employees exemption, the total annual compensation requirement would have been raised to $134,000 annually (up from $100,000).

The new regulatory revisions, however, were never implemented. In November of last year, days before the rule was to go into effect, a Texas federal district judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that put the implementation of the rule on hold. The DOL appealed this decision and employers waited as the DOL received multiple extensions to file its brief. When the DOL finally filed its brief in June, it declined to make an argument for the legality of the specific salary level change set forth in the new rule. The only issue this left before the court was whether the DOL had the authority to establish a salary level test for overtime exemptions.

While the appeal of the preliminary injunction was pending, the original federal district judge recently issued summary judgment invalidating the updated rule entirely. Soon after this ruling, DOL filed a motion to withdraw the appeal of the preliminary injunction (as it is now moot).

So, what now? The initial good news for employers is that the salary levels for overtime exemptions remain unchanged at the original lower amount. No immediate changes are required. DOL did publish a request for public comment on the appropriate salary level and duties test for exemptions this summer, signaling that there may yet be a revision to the exemptions. During his confirmation hearing last spring, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta stated that he thought “somewhere around $33,000” might be an appropriate threshold. This amount would, of course, be significantly lower than the $47,476 threshold sought under the prior administration.

For now, employers can relax knowing that no changes are necessary in order to accommodate new overtime rules. Nevertheless, it appears that employers can expect continued discussion in Washington on raising the existing overtime exemption threshold for the first time since 2004.