June 14, 2007

By a 9-0 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to upset Department of Labor regulations that exclude home health care workers from wage-hour coverage (earlier). Much of the news coverage, as usual, proceeded as if the question were simply: do we think exempting these workers is a good idea, or not? Fortunately, the court itself did not mistake its role for that of a surrogate legislature, and recognized that the legal issue before it was whether DoL acted within its authority in issuing the rule, which it clearly did.