The Labor Department withdrew a proposal that would have pulled roughly a quarter of its Fair Labor Standards Act interpretive guidance out of the Code of Federal Regulations, leaving the rules employers and workers lean on for wage-and-hour questions right where they are. The 2025 plan targeted nine parts, about 229 pages covering topics like who the law covers and industry-specific exemptions, and would have moved them into an appendix of the Wage and Hour Division’s field handbook, according to a National Law Review analysis of the withdrawal notice published Wednesday in the Federal Register.
The division said the proposal no longer fit the department’s needs and priorities, and commenters had warned about ripple effects for industries like trucking, retail and fuel distribution. For now nothing changes: the guidance stays on the books, and employers can keep relying on it for a good-faith defense in pay disputes. The department left the door open to modernizing the rules later, and its dated guidance for retail and service businesses looks like a likely first target.