While Trump Administration May Ease Regulatory Burden on Home Care Industry at the National Level, Potential Grows for Accelerated State and Local Activity

For decades, home care agencies classified their care workers as exempt from federal minimum wage and/or overtime requirements under the companionship and live-in domestic service worker exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division scrutinized the home care industry and, in October 2013, issued its Home Care Final Rule.  That rule, intended to go into effect on January 1, 2015, provides that workers employed by third-party agencies no longer qualify for either exemption.  The Wage and Hour Division began enforcing the new regulations in late 2015, after an unsuccessful challenge to the rule in federal court, and has been in the process of reshaping the industry.

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