In today’s News and Commentary, the Department of Labor’s domestic worker wage rules are partially invalidated, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are temporarily restrained from threatening to prosecute election officials, and USCIS is temporarily forced to reinstate minimum 21-day notice periods for asylum interviews for unaccompanied children.

On Thursday, the Department of Labor’s domestic worker wage rules were partially invalidated by the US District Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania. Judge W. Scott Hardy held that the Labor Department’s rule requiring some live-in domestic worker employers to comply with overtime and minimum wage requirements under the FLSA exceeded the agency’s statutory authority. The Third Party Employer Regulation was challenged in 2002, with the Supreme Court upholding the rule under Chevron deference to the agency’s interpretation of the statute. The Supreme Court in that challenge found that the FLSA explicitly left gaps for the agency to fill in using its expertise. However, relying on the Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright decision, Judge Hardy determined that the best reading of the FLSA did not support a rule requiring third-party employers of domestic workers to pay minimum wage or overtime to their employees. However, rather than vacating or nullifying the application of the regulation universally, the judge only set it aside as to the two plaintiff employers.

On Friday, the US District Court for the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security from threatening criminal prosecutions against state of local election officials. The agencies are further prevented from demanding that election workers halt ballot counting based on the belief that they were used by noncitizens. The Justice Department is further ordered to inform the court of any demands to access election materials or ballots. On October 29, the Department of Justice had directed federal prosecutors to issue criminal subpoenas to California election officials for their alleged facilitation of unlawful voting. The order was issued mere days before the 2026 midterm elections and is set to expire on November 16.

On Friday, the US District Court for the District of Maryland issued a temporary restraining order barring USCIS from providing minimal notice to unaccompanied minors before their asylum interviews. The plaintiffs, a group of legal nonprofits representing thousands of migrant children, sued the USCIS for implementing new fast-tracking policies that violate the heightened procedural protections Congress enacted specifically for unaccompanied children. The complaint alleged that, in some cases, they were given fewer than 24 hours’ notice of child clients’ asylum interviews. The court stayed this practice and ordered the reinstatement of USCIS’s former policy of providing written notice at least 21 days prior. The court also stayed USCIS’s policy requiring exceptional circumstances for the rescheduling of an interview, under which requests have been refused even in the case of counsel being scheduled for multiple interviews at the same time in different places. The court ordered the reinstatement of USCIS’s previous good cause standard, which permitted rescheduling for matter of course reasons like scheduling conflicts and the need for additional time to gather records and reports.