Last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was absent from the meeting of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee – and that spelled good news for the Biden Administration’s nominee to head the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the Department of Labor, Dr. David Weil. The nomination of Dr. Weil, who previously held the same position under the Obama Administration, had been stuck in committee since the Summer of 2021, with previous votes resulting in ties along party lines. However, with Senator Paul’s absence, Weil squeaked by on an 11-10 vote. His nomination will now go to the full Senate for consideration.
Dr. Weil, who currently is a professor at Brandeis University, has faced considerable opposition from members of the Republican party and the business community, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who believe, among other criticisms, that his views on the independent contractor analysis are antithetical to a successful “gig” economy. Perhaps most notably, Weil was at the helm of the WHD in 2016 when the DOL published a Final Rule that would have more than doubled the minimum salary to qualify for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional overtime exemptions (a.k.a. the “white collar” exemptions), from $23,660 to $47,476 per year. That Final Rule was struck down by a Texas federal judge shortly before going into effect and a new Final Rule was issued under the following administration, raising the minimum annual salary to a relatively more modest...
In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But fo...