AI Generated Opinion Summaries

This summary was computer-generated without any editorial revision. It is not official, has not been checked for accuracy, and is NOT citable.

Facts

• The plaintiff, an employee of the defendant, led educational tours with work schedules that did not always align with the defendant's established Sunday-to-Saturday workweek. Due to this misalignment, the plaintiff argued that he was not compensated with overtime pay for hours worked in excess of forty hours during a continuous seven-day period that spanned across two of the defendant's workweeks (para 2-3).

Procedural History

• Magistrate court: Dismissed the plaintiff's complaint for failure to prove allegations.
• District Court of Santa Fe County: Affirmed the magistrate court's dismissal and ruled in favor of the defendant on the basis of the established workweek definition (para 4).

Parties' Submissions

• Plaintiff: Argued that overtime pay should be calculated based on any continuous seven-day period in which more than forty hours were worked, regardless of the employer's established workweek (para 5).
• Defendant: Contended that the statute should be interpreted in line with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), allowing employers to establish a fixed and regularly recurring workweek for the purpose of calculating overtime, which in this case was defined as Sunday to Saturday (para 6).

Legal Issues

• Whether the term “any week of seven days” in the statute requires employers to pay overtime based on any seven-day period during which an employee works more than forty hours, or if it allows employers to establish a fixed workweek for calculating overtime (para 8).

Disposition

• The district court's judgment in favor of the defendant was affirmed (para 19).

Reasons

• The Court of Appeals, with Judge Cynthia A. Fry authoring the opinion, held that the statute must be interpreted in a manner consistent with the FLSA, allowing employers to establish a fixed and regularly recurring workweek for calculating overtime. The court found that this interpretation aligns with the legislative intent of the statute to ensure workers are compensated for overtime in a manner that protects their health and well-being. The court rejected the plaintiff's argument for a "roving" workweek as it did not provide evidence that the employer's established workweek was intended to evade overtime payment obligations. The court concluded that the employer's established Sunday-to-Saturday workweek and its method of calculating overtime were in compliance with the statute (paras 1, 10-18).