Dallas Morning News: Austin restaurateur is challenging Labor Department’s overreach

Writing in The Dallas Morning News, Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys Luke Wake and Frank Garrison discuss the case of Robert Mayfield (which Luke argued at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court earlier this month).  

From Luke and Frank’s op-ed: 

As the owner of 13 Dairy Queen franchises in and around Austin, restaurateur Robert Mayfield has a winning formula for standing out in the highly competitive marketplace of fast-food dining options — tasty menu options combined with top-flight customer service. 

To achieve those ends, Mayfield, a second-generation Dairy Queen franchisee, focuses on developing a high-quality workforce through competitive pay and performance incentives for his management team. 

He pays starting workers far above minimum wage and offers managerial employees a creative compensation structure with lower starting salaries but tremendous opportunities to earn bonuses when their store performs well. 

That salary strategy has been successful for years: It allows Mayfield to cultivate managerial talent and reward hard work. But the Department of Labor’s unilateral decision to increase the minimum compensation for salaried employees to $58,656 in January will have a huge effect on Mayfield’s business model. 

In their op-ed, Luke and Frank explain why Mayfield is suing the Department of Labor over the salary rule, with Pacific Legal Foundation’s help: 

If Congress were going to delegate minimum salary rulemaking authority [to the Department of Labor], one would expect Congress to have said so in clear terms, and to have provided direction to the agency on when and how high to set minimum salaries. But the statute is utterly silent on this issue. […] 

At bottom, the Department of Labor is inappropriately usurping Congress’ exclusive power to make law, so Mayfield is asking the courts to reject DOL’s claimed authority. 

Mayfield is challenging the federal authority because he simply wants to manage his business as effectively as possible, based on his relations with his workforce and the realities of local market conditions, not on the whims of distant bureaucrats. In trying to micromanage salary levels for every business in America, the Department of Labor has overstepped its bounds. Mayfield’s case is an essential step toward imposing sensible limits on the agency’s regulatory overreach. 

Read the full op-ed in The Dallas Morning News (subscription required).