Alaska Supreme Court lowers burden of proof for Wage and Hour Act exemptions

Reversing long-standing precedent, the Alaska Supreme Court recently lowered the burden of proof employers must meet to establish an exemption under the Alaska Wage and Hour Act (AWHA). The court held employers must prove the employee fits within an exemption by a preponderance of the evidence, rather than the far-higher threshold it had long applied. Also, state courts will more broadly interpret AWHA exemptions that are identical to those under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), potentially leading to their increased application.

How AWHA and FLSA exemptions work

Under both the AWHA and the FLSA, employers bear the burden of proving employees meet one of the statutory exemptions because it’s considered an affirmative defense. If an employer in Alaska fails to prove the employee meets one of the exemptions, then she is owed overtime compensation for work performed in excess of eight hours per day or 40 hours per week.

The federal standard of proof (and the standard in virtually every other jurisdiction) is a preponderance of the evidence. In other words, there’s a greater than 50 percent chance the employee meets one of the exemptions. Before the recent supreme court ruling, Alaska alone required an employer to establish a wage and hour exemption beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard of proof and one almost exclusively applied in a criminal context.