Auer v. Robbins Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

Auer v. Robbins | 519 U.S. 452 (1997)

Congress delegates power to federal administrative agencies like the Department of Labor to carry out its legislative priorities and goals. Agencies don’t make laws, but they do make regulations to administer, interpret, and enforce laws. Courts interpret laws, but do they have the same authority to interpret an agency’s regulations? The United States Supreme Court addressed this question in Auer versus Robbins.

Francis Auer was a sergeant with the St. Louis Police Department, and David Robbins was the acting president of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners. Auer and a number of other sergeants sued the board seeking overtime pay they claimed to be owed under the Fair Labor Standards Act, known as the FLSA. The board countered that the sergeants were exempt from overtime pay under the statute because they were professional, salaried employees. Under regulations published by the Secretary of Labor, one requirement for exempt status was that the employee earn a specified minimum amount paid regularly on a salary basis. This amount couldn’t be subject to reduction based on the quantity or quality of work produced or for disciplinary reasons. But the police department manual permitted the department to reduce an employee’s compensation for a variety of disciplinary infractions. The sergeants argued that this provision meant that the sergeants failed the salary-basis test. Therefore, the sergeants weren’t exempt and were owed overtime pay.

The district court found for the board, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed. The United States Supreme Court granted cert.




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