Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up two cases challenging the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) tip pooling regulations June 25.
• The appealed opinion — addressing National Restaurant Association v. DOL and Wynn Las Vegas, LLC v. Joseph Cesarz — came from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and upheld the agency's Obama-era rule limiting tip-sharing arrangements.
• The High Court's action leaves intact a split among the federal circuit courts of appeal.

Dive Insight:

The rules in question limit employers' ability to require that tipped employees share their gratuities with non-tipped employees. Businesses and their advocates challenged the rules and a split emerged.

Following the change in administrations, however, President Donald Trump's DOL announced plans to rescind the rule. But after it was revealed that the agency's Wage and Hour Division omitted an internal analysis from its December Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), its Office of Inspector General announced an audit of the division's rulemaking process.

Since then, Trump included a provision in a spending bill that amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to forbid employers from pocketing workers' tips in tip pooling arrangements — a move that addressed a concern many raised about the rescission. With that issue out of the way, DOL may be able to move forward with its plan to undo the original rulemaking; according to the agency's most recent regulatory agenda, a new NPRM could come as soon as August.