10/17/2022 10:00 AM EDT
With help from Eleanor Mueller
LIFE IN LIMBO: The Labor Department was in the spotlight last week after it rolled out the Biden administration’s proposed revamp of rules for determining independent contractor status.
It also revived attention on the person who’s overseeing the effort: Jessica Looman.
Looman was the acting administrator of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division at the start of the process, but she had to drop that title when President Joe Biden nominated her to lead the agency on a permanent basis after the Senate shot down his first choice, David Weil.
The Federal Vacancies Reform Act bars people like Looman from continuing to serve as a temporary leader while their nomination is pending, but DOL fashioned a workaround that’s lasted for several months while the Senate dawdles on Biden’s labor nominees.
DOL has stationed her as the principal deputy administrator and delegating all allowable authority to that position, a move that complies with the law while encroaching upon the spirit of it.
“For all intents and purposes, the person has all the exact same powers they would have had if they were the acting officer, but without the acting title,” Thomas Berry, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, told Shift. “Courts are very, very hesitant to find any power exclusive and non-delegable.”
POLITICO spoke to several lawyers and DOL experts, none of whom thought that Looman’s...
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