The Labor Department is moving to return regulations around joint employment liability to standards set under the first Trump administration, and attorneys say the current legal landscape will make it harder for worker advocates to fight it in court this time around.
The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division recently sent a proposed joint employer rule to the White House for approval, indicating the agency is preparing to soon release their plan for determining when companies share minimum wage, overtime, and other liabilities.
It’ll be the department’s first attempt at changing the standard since the Biden administration rescinded a business-friendly Trump 1.0 rule that required one business to exert “actual” control over another company’s workers to be held liable for them. That test limits how often corporate brands are responsible for labor violations by their business partners and franchisees.
The Trump regulation was largely vacated by a judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York after states sued the DOL.
Michael Duff, a labor law professor at Saint Louis University, said the pending rule is expected to largely mimic the earlier Trump administration policy and would likely follow the same path. This time, he said, courts are more limited in how they can broadly halt federal policies.
“The same states are going to challenge the rule, probably in the same place and then we get into the question of what the court does and whether the court can issue a...
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