Top Court Makes It Easier for Employers to Dodge Overtime Claims

A new US Supreme Court ruling will boost companies’ ability to defeat claims they wrongly exempted workers from federal overtime pay, putting them on equal footing with other civil defendants who use a more lenient evidentiary standard.

The justices unanimously ruled Wednesday that the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t define the burden of proof required to show workers shouldn’t qualify for overtime, so employers relying on an exemption can use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard commonly found in civil litigation.

The FLSA has multiple overtime exemptions covering a range of roles, from administrative and executive workers to outside sales ...