Quicken Loans Inc., a major downtown Detroit employer, said Monday that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling backing overtime pay for mortgage-loan officers should have little impact on operations because it already offers overtime.
The high court on Monday unanimously backed a Labor Department rule from 2010 that said mortgage-loan officers are eligible for overtime pay. Quicken, the nation’s No. 2 direct-to-consumer mortgage company, said it has changed its compensation structure but did not give an exact time frame.
“This ruling will have no effect on how Quicken Loans pays its mortgage bankers,” company spokesman Aaron Emerson said in an email.
Emerson added later Monday that “Quicken Loans offers its mortgage banking professionals a salary, overtime and bonus pay.”
Quicken reports employing about 10,000 people in downtown.
A mortgage industry trade group sued to block the Labor Department’s 2010 overtime rule, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against it Monday.
During the George W. Bush administration, the Labor Department decided in 2006 that mortgage bankers were exempt from overtime pay requirements.
But the department reversed itself four years later under the Obama administration, concluding that mortgage bankers must indeed be paid overtime.
Work weeks beyond 40 hours are common for loan officers at Quicken Loans and throughout the mortgage industry.
Quicken has been involved in several lawsuits involving overtime pay for its mortgage workers, including a class-action federal suit brought by 400 former employees that the company won in 2011. In that case, a federal jury ruled that the Quicken employees did not qualify for overtime pay because the federal rules in effect during their time at the company didn’t require it.
Adam Hansen, an attorney with Minneapolis-based Nichols Kaster who represented the former Quicken employees, said there are still three similar and pending overtime cases against the mortgage company.
The case decided Monday was brought by the Mortgage Bankers Association against the Labor Department. The ruling overturned an appeals court’s decision that had sided with the trade association, which sought a formal notice-and-comment process for the 2010 rule change.
The Labor Department has the power to determine which types of workers are exempt from overtime requirements under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.
