WASHINGTON _ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened a new front in his legal battles against the Obama administration, this time leading the challenge against the White House's effort to make more Americans eligible for overtime pay.
Paxton on Tuesday led 21 states in filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Labor Department in a federal district court in Texas. The Republican is accusing the administration of overreach, saying the department didn't have "valid congressional authorization" to move forward.
The new regulations _ which go into effect in December _ raised the overtime eligibility threshold to $47,476 a year from $23,660 a year. Administration officials have estimated that the change could benefit more than 4 million Americans.
Paxton, however, said the rules were part of a "radical leftist agenda."
"Once again, President Obama is trying to unilaterally rewrite the law," he said in a news release. "And this time, it may lead to disastrous consequences for our economy."
The Labor and Justice departments didn't immediately return a request for comment.
But advocates for the overtime overhaul were quick to criticize the lawsuit. Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said sarcastically that the salary standard had also been raised in the past by "other communists like George W. Bush and Gerald Ford."
"It's remarkable that somehow they think it's an overreach," he said. "But it's not an overreach when an employer asks a $25,000-a-year employee to work 20 hours of overtime for free?"
Paxton _ like his predecessor, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott _ has been no friend to the Obama administration. He's challenged the federal government on several fronts, with his focus more recently trained on transgender rights being pushed by the White House.
Paxton is joined in the latest suit by a Republican coterie of officials from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin.
