Beltway Buzz, August 18, 2017
The Beltway Buzz is a weekly update summarizing labor and employment news from inside the Beltway and clarifying how what’s happening in Washington, D.C. could impact your business.
The Beltway Buzz is a weekly update summarizing labor and employment news from inside the Beltway and clarifying how what’s happening in Washington, D.C. could impact your business.
August 11, 2017, was the deadline for interested parties to submit comments regarding the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposal to formally rescind its controversial persuader rule, which was issued in 2016 under the Obama administration.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) moved one step closer to undoing President Obama’s permanently enjoined “persuader activity” regulation when, on June 12, the agency issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for reverse rulemaking to rescind the rule and perhaps revise it.
On November 16, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Lubbock Division) converted its injunction preventing implementation of the U.S. Department of Labor’s revised persuader rule on a national basis from preliminary to permanent. According to Judge Sam R. Cummings’s order, the court converted the preliminary injunction to a permanent one for the same reasons “stated in the Court’s Preliminary Injunction Order entered June 27, 2016” in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Perez, et al. Judge Cummings found the DOL’s revised persuader rule to be “not merely fuzzy around the edges.
On June 27, 2016, in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Perez, et al., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Lubbock Division) granted Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, thereby enjoining the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) from implementing and enforcing its revised persuader rule on a national basis. The Court found that Plaintiffs’ challenge to the new rule, which was set to become effective July 1, 2016, has a substantial likelihood of success on the merits and that Plaintiffs have shown that they would be irreparably harmed if the rule was not enjoined.
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