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Dive brief:
- A federal judge dismissed on Thursday a New Mexico trucking company’s motion to preliminarily enjoin the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2024 independent contractor final rulehanding a regulatory victory to the Biden administration in its final weeks.
- In Colt & Joe Trucking, LLC v. US Department of Laborthe plaintiffs alleged that the DOL rule caused them to terminate the employment of one of their four independent owner-operator drivers and left them unable to hire a replacement. In their May 2024 complaint, the plaintiffs also asserted this DOL did not have the legal authority dictate the rule, which the company alleged was arbitrary, capricious and unconstitutional.
- Judge Kea Riggs sided with DOL, holding that the plaintiffs failed to show that they were injured by the rule, thus indicating that they lacked standing to sue DOL. Likewise, Riggs dismissed the plaintiffs’ statutory and constitutional claims, although it held that the plaintiffs “incorrectly state” their arguments regarding due process and Regulatory Flexibility Act violations.
Diving knowledge:
The DOL rule has so far prevailed in the courts despite several attempts to block it. Riggs’ decision joins that of a federal judge in Georgia who also fired a challenge to the final rule by a group of freelance writers and editors last October. The plaintiffs in the case, Warren v. US Department of Laborthey have since appealed that decision to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
A separate challenge filed last year by Louisiana transportation workers seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction from the rule it also failed when a judge denied both motions. The plaintiffs in this case, Frisard’s Transportation v. US Department of Laborappealed to the 5th Circuit and the court has scheduled oral argument for February.
Another challenge, Coalition for Labor Innovation against Suis the continuation of a long-running legal fight challenging the Biden administration’s DOL decision to replace its previous independent contractor standard with the current one proposed in the 2024 final rule. The case is ongoing .
announced more than a year agothe final rule sought to extend the Fair Labor Standards Act’s wage and hour protections to workers the agency believes are misclassified as independent contractors. The rule established a “totality of the circumstances” framework for evaluating whether a worker is properly classified as an independent contractor.
The Colt & Joe Trucking the plaintiffs argued that they had taken steps to avoid litigation arising from the rule. But Riggs argued that those claims did not give rise to standing “because they are not specific [facts]but rather conclusive hypotheses about the plaintiff’s future.”
Riggs also found that DOL did not act from a flawed legal premise when it promulgated the final rule and properly account for the costs to regulated parties in doing so.
