F.W. Webb Company v. Vincent N. Micone, III, Acting Secretary, Department of Labor

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) creates an overtime exemption for “administrative” employees as that term is “defined and delimited from time to time by regulations of the Secretary” of Labor. 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1). The Secretary’s published regulations make that exemption employee-specific and fact-intensive; it turns on “the type of work performed by the employee.” 29 C.F.R. § 541.201; see also, e.g., id. § 541.700(a) (“Determination of an employee’s primary duty must be based on all the facts in a particular case.”). The First Circuit, however, instead applies an extratextual test called the “relational analysis,” which makes the employer’s business—rather than the nature of the employee’s duties as such—the dispositive factor in determining the applicability of the exemption. The question presented is whether this judicially created “relational analysis” can be used to decide the FLSA’s administrative exemption, in contravention of the Secretary’s regulations.