“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
What’s at stake in this case?
The Department of Labor charged a large company that operates healthcare facilities with failure to pay over $35 million in overtime and related pay to around 6000 employees.
What happened in this case?
Comprehensive Health Care Management Services operated health care facilities in Pennsylvania employing around 6000 people. After an investigation, the Department of Labor charged the company with violating overtime pay rules and other requirements of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). A federal district court ruled for the Department in 2024 and ordered the company to pay over $35 million.
This included an award for “overtime gap time” –that is, compensation for non overtime hours worked during a pay period by an employee who has also worked overtime hours. For example, if an employee with a 40-hour work week is required to work 43 hours by missing lunch breaks and is paid for 38 regular hours and 3 overtime hours, she has an “overtime gap time” claim “for those two remaining hours of non-overtime work.”
The company argued on appeal that the FLSA does not authorize awards for overtime gap pay. In a 2-1 decision by George W Bush judge Michael Chagares and Trump judge David Porter, the Third Circuit majority ruled for the corporation in its June decision in Secretary of Labor v Comprehensive Health Care Management Services. The majority maintained that the FLSA does not authorize overtime gap pay, as a Second Circuit court had previously ruled. George HW Bush judge Jane Roth dissented.
Why did Judge Roth dissent?
According to Judge Roth, the majority’s view that employees should not be compensated for overtime gap time “runs afoul” of FLSA’s “remedial purpose” of ensuring that employees receive “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” She also explained that her conclusion was supported by a recent decision of the Fourth Circuit on the issue and by the Department’s “longstanding” interpretive guidance, which has remained unchanged since 1968 and has been cited in “numerous other” Department interpretations and administrative decisions. Recognizing overtime gap pay, Judge Roth concluded, will help fulfill the FLSA’s goal of ensuring that employers do not “mitigate or skirt the financial pressures of working their employees above the forty-hour threshold” without proper compensation.
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Why is the ruling harmful?
The decision made possible by Trump judge Porter obviously harms the health care employees who were owed overtime gap time pay that had been withheld by their employer. It also sets a bad precedent in the Third Circuit and elsewhere concerning the importance of providing employees overtime gap pay, an issue that may well go to the Supreme Court for resolution. The ruling also illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.