Just as many employers were finalizing their 2025 budgets, on Nov. 15, 2024, a federal court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction six weeks before the second of two meaningful changes to the federal overtime law was set to take effect.

Unless specifically exempted, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires covered employees to be paid overtime when they work more than 40 hours during a week. One group of employees that is exempted from the overtime requirements are those who qualify as executive, administrative or professional (EAP) employees. To qualify for this overtime exemption, workers must perform certain job duties and be paid on a salary basis. Until earlier this year, to qualify for the exemption, workers had to be paid a minimum yearly salary of $35,568. In other words, those employees who earned in excess of this amount did not have to be paid overtime if they worked more than 40 hours in a week.