Overtime rules roll back to 2019 levels

May 6, 2026

NNA industry alert 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lynne Lance, lynne@nna.org

The Trump Administration has dismissed a legal challenge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to a ruling on President Biden’s 2024 overtime rule.

With the dismissal, the threshold weekly salary or fee for a person classified as exempt from overtime pay rolls back from $844 per week to $684 per week.

Workers paid less than that threshold are due time-and-a-half for work over 40 hours a week. Workers over that threshold may be exempt from overtime pay if their work fits into the Labor Department’s definitions of Executive, Administrative or Professional work. There also is an exemption for Highly-Compensated Executives of $107,432 per year as well as individuals engaged in Outside Sales, which requires work almost exclusively outside the office.

National Newspaper Association Chair Martha Diaz Aszkenazy, publisher of the San Fernando (California) Valley Sun and El Sol, said the decision will help newspaper readers.

“While it is important to fairly compensate our valued staff, the overtime rules had a perverse effect upon news coverage," she said. "If an editor was working on a wildfire story or another natural disaster and the 40-hour limit was reached, work would have to stop. Some news outlets have the ability to authorize the overtime, but in this environment, money is tight and budget discipline is essential for our sustainability.

"At NNA we have long favored policies that would let staff finish the story and earn compensatory time to be taken around holidays or during slow news times, but we have been unable to persuade regulators that time off is important. Now we can work on policies that make more sense for our staff as well as our readers.”

A copy of the Labor Department’s stipulation to dismiss the Overtime rule appeal is here.