decided January 15, 2025
In a unanimous Opinion, the Court ruled that employers defending a federal wage-and-hour lawsuit by their employees on the ground of a wage-and-hour law exclusion of those employees’ activities from the law’s requirements, need only prove the factual grounds for the exclusion by a “preponderance-of-the-evidence” instead of “clear and convincing evidence.” The federal wage-and-hour law, officially known as the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201 et.seq. does not specify any standard or burden of proof for either party in a lawsuit brought under that Act. To supply that omission, the Court turned to “common law” practice in “civil” cases over property claims, where winning only required a “preponderance-of-the-evidence.”
COMMENT: The Court’s analogy fits the nature of competing claims in a wage-and-hour lawsuit and therefore serves the rule-of-law the courts are bound to enforce.
RECENT RULINGS 