Federal wage and hour lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act reached a new high for the 12 months ending in March, employment law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP reported. The firm reported 8,126 Fair Labor Standards Act cases were filed, up 5 percent from the preceding 12-month period. The law firm cited data obtained from the Federal Judicial Center.

This is the seventh straight year of increases in federal court wage and hour lawsuits, which have increased 237 percent in the past decade and 438 percent since 2000.

“The wage and hour litigation epidemic continues, and we expect this trend to expand further in the coming year,” said Richard Alfred, chair of Seyfarth’s wage and hour litigation practice. “While the rise we’ve seen in FLSA cases is astonishing, these numbers are also just one part of the equation. They would be even higher if wage and hour lawsuits filed in state courts under state pay practices, data which isn’t readily available, were added.”

Alfred cited several factors that will fuel the continued rise of FLSA lawsuits during the next 12 months:

• The tightening of the federal standards for class certification has driven plaintiffs’ attorneys to file many single and multi-plaintiff lawsuits if and when class certification is denied or a class is decertified.
• Talk of raising the minimum wage has increased focus on wage and hour laws and the availability of overtime pay.
• President Obama’s recent directive to the Secretary of Labor to revise the regulations on “white collar” exemptions has, as it did the last time the regulations were amended in 2004, caused employees to pay more attention to wage and hour policies and practices.