The company's boss paid straight time for every hour and said he didn't know better
The Kansas Secretary of Labor applied the wrong law in an overtime case against a roofing company.
The Kansas Court of Appeals ruled on September 25 that the Department of Labor wrongly used the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when it found LJ Beck Roofing and Guttering owed eight roofers roughly $89,000 in unpaid overtime, penalties, and interest.
The workers filed wage claims in April 2022, saying they were never paid overtime rates. The company's president did not deny the overtime was worked - he told the agency he simply paid everyone their regular rate because he did not know a higher rate applied.
The agency sided with the workers. It found the company liable under the FLSA, then stacked penalties and interest under the Kansas Wage Payment Act. The total ran to approximately $49,000 drawn from payroll records, plus another $40,000 estimated for an earlier stretch where the company never produced the records the agency requested.
A settlement went nowhere. The company offered $20,000 - less than a quarter of the total - split eight ways. One worker signed. The company never paid.
The appeals court found the agency built its case on the wrong foundation. LJ Beck Roofing's gross receipts sat under $300,000, well short of the FLSA's $500,000 enterprise coverage threshold. The agency also had no evidence the workers regularly crossed state lines or handled interstate commerce - the test for individual coverage.
Without the FLSA, the court held, the state wage payment act could not enforce federal overtime obligations it was never designed to carry.
That does not leave the workers empty-handed. The court pointed the agency toward the Kansas Minimum Wage and Maximum Hours Law, the state-level counterpart to the FLSA. It sets overtime at 46 hours per week rather than 40 but covers workers the federal act misses. If the agency finds a violation, it can still apply the wage payment act's penalty provisions.
One finding survived untouched: the company's president can be held personally liable as someone with "charge of the affairs" of the employer. He signed the paychecks, signed the company's response to the claims, and testified at length about how the business ran.
For HR teams at smaller firms, the practical point is direct - falling below the FLSA revenue line does not switch off overtime obligations when state law is standing right behind it.
