Court Opinion

ID: 9395817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-18 18:01:01.251673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:11.701703
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-10954    Document: 35-1      Date Filed: 05/18/2023   Page: 1 of 20

                                                              [PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 21-10954
                           ____________________

        DAVID THOMPSON,
                                                       Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
        versus
        REGIONS SECURITY SERVICES, INC.,
        a Florida corporation,

                                                     Defendant-Appellee.

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Southern District of Florida
                     D.C. Docket No. 0:20-cv-62152-WPD
                           ____________________
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        2                           Opinion of the Court                  21-10954

        Before WILSON and ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges, and CONWAY,*
        District Judge.
        ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge:
               The Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits an employer from
        scheduling an employee “for a workweek longer than forty hours”
        without paying that employee overtime compensation. 29 U.S.C. §
        207(a)(1). To enforce that command, the FLSA requires an em-
        ployer to pay two diﬀerent compensation rates: (1) an employee’s
        regular rate, which describes the non-overtime hourly rate that he
        regularly earns; and (2) an employee’s overtime rate, which must
        be at least “one-and-one-half times the regular rate at which he is
        employed.” Id.
               In this case, Plaintiﬀ-Appellant David Thompson, a security
        guard, alleged that his employer set two diﬀerent “regular rates”
        and that one of those rates was an artiﬁcial one that his employer
        designed to avoid complying with the FLSA’s overtime-compensa-
        tion requirement. When Thompson became a security guard for
        Defendant-Appellee Regional Security Services, Inc., his estab-
        lished regular rate was $13.00, and he typically worked a forty-hour
        week. But seven months after Regional Security ﬁrst started sched-
        uling Thompson to work overtime, it reduced his rate to $11.15 per
        hour. About a year later, Regional Security stopped scheduling

        * The Honorable Anne C. Conway, United States District Judge for the Middle

        District of Florida, sitting by designation.
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        21-10954               Opinion of the Court                        3

        Thompson to work overtime hours and at the same time restored
        his non-overtime pay rate to $13.00 per hour.
                This case requires us to decide whether Thompson’s “regu-
        lar rate” was $13.00 per hour or $11.15 per hour during the year or
        so that he worked overtime hours and earned $11.15 per hour.
        Thompson’s allegations support his theory that Regional Security
        set an artiﬁcial $11.15 rate during the year that it scheduled him to
        work signiﬁcant overtime hours so that it could avoid paying him
        $19.50 (one-and-a-half times his $13.00 rate) for his overtime hours.
        Indeed, during the year that Thompson worked signiﬁcant over-
        time hours, his reduced $11.15 rate caused him to earn on average
        $13.00 per hour for all sixty hours in a sixty-hour workweek. See
        infra n.4. Plus, Regional Security immediately reverted to paying
        Thompson’s $13.00 rate when it stopped scheduling him to work
        overtime hours.
               Because these allegations plausibly support Thompson’s
        claim that Regional Security reduced Thompson’s regular rate to
        avoid paying him overtime compensation, we conclude that Re-
        gional Security’s motion for judgment on the pleadings was re-
        quired to be denied. We therefore vacate the district court’s order
        granting that motion and remand for further proceedings.
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        4                          Opinion of the Court                        21-10954

                                                I.
               David Thompson worked as a security guard for Regional
        Security Services, Inc. 1 He typically worked forty hours per week,
        and Regional Security paid him $13.00 per hour. But in January
        2019, Regional Security began scheduling Thompson for an addi-
        tional twenty or so hours per week, raising his weekly total to
        about sixty hours. For the next seven months, Thompson contin-
        ued to earn his established hourly rate of $13.00 per hour for the
        ﬁrst forty hours he worked in a week. And for each hour he worked
        beyond that, he earned an overtime rate of $19.50 per hour (time-
        and-a-half ).
               Then, on July 22, 2019, Regional Security reduced Thomp-
        son’s rate to $11.15 per hour for the ﬁrst forty hours. Correspond-
        ingly, Regional Security lowered Thompson’s overtime rate to
        $16.73 per hour (again, time-and-a-half ). For the next eleven-some-
        odd months, Thompson worked between ﬁfty-ﬁve and seventy-ﬁve
        hours per week.
              After scheduling Thompson to work overtime and paying
        him a reduced rate for nearly a year, Regional Security made an

        1 Because we are reviewing the district court’s order entering judgment on the

        pleadings, our description of the facts accepts the allegations in Thompson’s
        complaint as true. See, e.g., Perez v. Wells Fargo N.A., 774 F.3d 1329, 1335 (11th
        Cir. 2014) (citation omitted). The actual facts may or may not be as alleged.
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        21-10954               Opinion of the Court                         5

        abrupt turn. All at once, it cut Thompson’s workweek to forty
        hours and restored his non-overtime hourly rate to $13.00.
               Based on these facts, Thompson sued Regional Security, al-
        leging that it reduced his hourly rate “to an artiﬁcially low rate to
        avoid” the FLSA’s overtime provisions during the year that it paid
        him a non-overtime hourly rate of $11.15. In other words, Thomp-
        son asserted that Regional Security diminished his hourly rate to
        $11.15 from $13.00 so that it could schedule him for signiﬁcant
        overtime hours without having to pay him $19.50 (one-and-a-half
        times his $13.00 hourly rate) for those overtime hours.
               Regional Security moved for judgment on the pleadings, and
        the district court granted that motion. Thompson now appeals.
                                         II.
                We use the de novo standard to review a district court’s order
        granting judgment on the pleadings. Perez, 774 F.3d at 1335 (cita-
        tion omitted). Granting judgment on the pleadings is appropriate
        when “there are no material facts in dispute and the moving party
        is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Id. (quoting Cannon v.
        City of W. Palm Beach, 250 F.3d 1299, 1301 (11th Cir. 2001)). When
        determining whether judgment on the pleadings should be
        granted, “we accept as true all material facts alleged in the non-
        moving party’s pleading, and we view those facts in the light most
        favorable to the non-moving party.” Id. (citation omitted).
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                21-10954

                                        III.
               Under the FLSA, if an employee’s “workweek [is] longer
        than forty hours,” the employer must pay that employee overtime
        compensation. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). And the rate at which the
        FLSA requires a covered employer to compensate its employee for
        each hour beyond forty in that employee’s workweek is “not less
        than one-and-one-half times the regular rate at which he is em-
        ployed.” Id.
                This appeal turns on the meaning of the statutory phrase
        “regular rate.” As the Supreme Court has explained, an employee’s
        “regular rate” is the “keystone” of the FLSA’s overtime provisions.
        Walling v. Youngerman-Reynolds Hardwood Co. (“Youngerman-Reyn-
        olds”), 325 U.S. 419, 424 (1945). Because an employee’s overtime
        rate must equal at least one-and-a-half times his regular rate, an
        employee’s overtime rate depends on his regular rate. “The proper
        determination of that rate is therefore of prime importance.” Id.
        Signiﬁcantly, the regular rate “is not an arbitrary label chosen by
        the parties; it is an actual fact.” Id.
               In construing the term “regular rate,” we begin with the
        statutory text. Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 638 (2016) (“Statutory
        interpretation, as we always say, begins with the text.”).
               The FLSA generally deﬁnes the “‘regular rate’ . . . to include
        all renumeration for employment paid to” the employee. 29 U.S.C.
        § 207(e). But the term excludes from its parameters certain sums,
        payments, and compensation. See id. As relevant here, “regular
        rate” excludes an employee’s compensation for overtime hours
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        21-10954                Opinion of the Court                          7

        worked. See id. at § 207(e)(5), (7); see also Bay Ridge Operating Co. v.
        Aaron, 334 U.S. 446, 464 (1948) (“Congress intended to exclude over-
        time premium payments from the computation of the regular rate
        of pay.”). As a result, “the regular rate refers to the hourly rate
        actually paid to the employee for the normal, non-overtime work-
        week for which he is employed.” Youngerman-Reynolds, 325 U.S. at
        424 (citation omitted). That is, an employee’s regular rate is his
        total weekly non-overtime wages divided by his total weekly non-
        overtime hours. See Aaron, 334 U.S. at 461 (“Wage divided by hours
        equals regular rate.”).
               Thompson had two diﬀerent non-overtime hourly rates, so
        we must decide which of those two rates was his “regular rate” for
        purposes of the FLSA during the year or so that he worked signiﬁ-
        cant overtime hours. Regional Security urges that Thompson’s
        $11.15 hourly rate—the non-overtime hourly rate that it paid him
        over that year—was Thompson’s “regular rate” during that period.
        Thompson, on the other hand, contends that his regular rate was
        $13.00—the rate that he earned both before he started and after he
        ﬁnished working overtime.
              The statutory deﬁnition of “regular rate,” in and of itself,
        does not resolve this dispute. So we delve further.
               Because the statute does not further deﬁne “regular,” we
        give the term its “ordinary public meaning.” Bostock v. Clayton
        Cnty., 140 S. Ct. 1731, 1738 (2020). To discern that meaning, we
        consult dictionaries in use when Congress enacted the FLSA in
        1938. See, e.g., Taniguchi v. Kan Pac. Saipan, Ltd., 566 U.S. 560, 566
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        8                       Opinion of the Court                 21-10954

        (2012); United States v. Dominguez, 997 F.3d 1121, 1124 (11th Cir.
        2021) (citation omitted).
               Those dictionaries deﬁne the word “regular” to mean
        “[s]teady or uniform in course, practice, or occurrence.” Webster’s
        New International Dictionary 2099 (2d ed. 1934); see also Black’s
        Law Dictionary 1518 (3d ed. 1933) (noting that regular “implies uni-
        formity, continuity, consistency, and method”). A regular rate
        therefore refers to a rate that is “selected . . . in conformity with
        established or prescribed usages, rules,” or principles. Webster’s
        New International Dictionary, supra, at 2099; Black’s Law Diction-
        ary, supra, at 1518 (describing regular as “[a]ccording to rule; as op-
        posed to that which constitutes an exception to the rule”).
              We do not think that deﬁnition unambiguously answers the
        question of whether, on these facts, Thompson’s regular rate was
        $13.00 or $11.15.
               To be sure, Thompson alleged that his “established” non-
        overtime hourly rate was $13.00, based on his ﬁrst several months
        of employment with Regional Security. This argument has a cer-
        tain amount of appeal. After all, right up until July 22, 2019, $13.00
        was the only non-overtime hourly rate Regional Security ever paid
        Thompson. And as soon as Regional Security stopped scheduling
        Thompson to work overtime hours following the period when it
        paid him a non-overtime rate of $11.15, it immediately reverted to
        paying Thompson’s $13.00 rate. In this sense, Thompson’s “estab-
        lished or prescribed” rate might fairly be characterized as $13.00.
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        21-10954               Opinion of the Court                         9

               On the other hand, under § 207, an employer can lawfully
        reduce an employee’s non-overtime rate in some situations. In-
        deed, the Supreme Court has said that “[t]he Act clearly contem-
        plates the setting of the regular rate in a bona ﬁde manner through
        wage negotiations between employer and employee, provided that
        the statutory minimum is respected.” Walling v. Helmerich & Payne,
        323 U.S. 37, 42 (1944). So “[a]s long as the minimum hourly rates
        established by Section 6 are respected, the employer and employee
        are free to establish [the] regular rate at any point and in any man-
        ner they see ﬁt.” Youngerman-Reynolds, 325 U.S. at 424. The sole
        limitation on “this freedom of contract” is that it “does not include
        the right to compute the regular rate in a wholly unrealistic and
        artiﬁcial manner so as to negate the statutory purposes” of the
        FLSA. Helmerich & Payne, 323 U.S. at 42.
               In Parth v. Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, 630 F.3d 794
        (9th Cir. 2010), for instance, the Ninth Circuit, relying in part on
        Youngerman-Reynolds, held that an “employer may reduce” its em-
        ployees’ regular rates to accommodate their scheduling desires “so
        long as the rate reduction was not designed to circumvent the pro-
        visions (including overtime) of the [FLSA].” Id. at 797.
               Here, Regional Security paid Thompson $11.15 for nearly a
        year, and Regional Security’s answer to Thompson’s complaint al-
        leges that it did so to accommodate Thompson’s “requested sched-
        uling modiﬁcations.” Still, though, we must view the pleadings in
        the light most favorable to Thompson, and in doing that, we can’t
        tell based on the pleadings alone whether the parties permissibly
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 21-10954

        contracted for the $11.15 rate. So we can’t say that the statutory
        language unambiguously answers the question of whether
        Thompson’s “regular rate” was $13.00 or $11.15.
               On top of that, the Supreme Court has acknowledged the
        ambiguous nature of the term “regular rate.” More generally, in
        Bay Ridge Operating Co. v. Aaron, the Court explained that in the
        FLSA, “Congress necessarily had to rely upon judicial or adminis-
        trative application of its standards in applying sanctions to individ-
        ual situations. These standards had to be expressed in words of
        generality.” 334 U.S. at 461–62. And as for the phrase “regular rate”
        in particular, the Supreme Court characterized Walling v. A.H. Belo
        Corp., 316 U.S. 624 (1942), as having “refrained from rigidly deﬁn-
        ing ‘regular rate’ in a guaranteed weekly wage contract that met
        the statutory requirements of § 7(a) for minimum compensation.”
        Aaron, 334 U.S. at 462 (citing A.H. Belo Corp., 316 U.S. at 634).
               In sum, then, the statutory language is inconclusive about
        whether $11.15 or $13.00 is “the regular rate at which [Thompson]
        is employed.” Perhaps for that reason, the parties’ dispute centers
        on the Department of Labor’s (the “Department”) interpretations
        of the FLSA’s overtime provisions. Those interpretations reside in
        Part 778 of Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations. See 29
        C.F.R. § 778.1.
                Before we dive into that part of the Code of Federal Regula-
        tions, though, we pause to consider the weight that we accord to
        the interpretations in Part 788. To determine the answer to that
        question, we begin with Part 788’s origins. Before the Department
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        21-10954                   Opinion of the Court                              11

        promulgated Part 788, the agency’s interpretations of the FLSA’s
        overtime requirements appeared “in an interpretative bulletin and
        in informal rulings.” Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134, 137
        (1944). Faced with a question involving one of these interpretive
        bulletins, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Department’s
        informal interpretations are “not controlling upon the courts by
        reason of their authority,” id. at 140; see also Overnight Motor Transp.
        Co. v. Misel, 316 U.S. 572, 580 n.17 (1942), superseded by statute, Port-
        to-Portal Pay Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 84, as recognized in Trans World
        Airlines, Inc. v. Thurston, 469 U.S. 111, 128 n.29 (1985); Foremost Dair-
        ies, Inc. v. Wirtz, 381 F.2d 653, 659 (5th Cir. 1967) (“We are, of
        course, not bound by interpretative bulletins or administrative
        opinions.”). 2
               The Department replaced those interpretive bulletins with
        Part 788, which it published to the Code of Federal Regulations “to
        make available in one place the” agency’s interpretations of the
        FLSA’s overtime requirements. See Overtime Compensation, 33
        Fed. Reg. 986, 987–88 ( Jan. 26, 1968) (codiﬁed as amended at 29
        C.F.R. pt. 788). In so doing, the Department invoked the Adminis-
        trative Procedure Act’s exception for interpretive rules to the

        2 The decisions of the former Fifth Circuit handed down before October 1,
        1981, are binding on this Court. Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209
        (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc).
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        12                          Opinion of the Court                        21-10954

        notice-and-comment requirements. 3 33 Fed. Reg. at 986; see also 5
        U.S.C. § 553(b)(A) (excepting “interpretative rules” from notice and
        comment). Still, we continued to acknowledge that the bulletins in
        Part 788 “provide us with guidance simply because they reﬂect the
        position of those most experienced with the application of the

        3 When an agency promulgates an interpretation of an ambiguous statute us-
        ing notice-and-comment procedures, the resulting interpretation is generally
        entitled to deference under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense
        Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984), meaning it receives “controlling weight unless [it
        is] arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute,” id. at 844. See,
        e.g., U.S. v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 230–31 (2001) (describing “notice-and-
        comment” procedures “as significant . . . in pointing to Chevron authority”).
        On the other hand, an agency interpretation that was not promulgated
        through notice-and-comment procedures generally does not receive Chevron-
        style deference. See, e.g., Miccosukee Tribe of Indians v. U.S., 566 F.3d 1257,
        1272–73 (11th Cir. 2009) (quoting Christensen v. Harris County, 529 U.S. 576, 587
        (2000)). Instead, interpretations promulgated through less formal proce-
        dures—as Part 778 was—generally receive Skidmore deference. Rodriquez v.
        Farm Stores Grocery, Inc., 518 F.3d 1259, 1268 n.5 (11th Cir. 2008). In contrast
        to Chevron deference, Skidmore deference is deference to an agency’s interpre-
        tation that corresponds to “the thoroughness evident in [the agency’s] consid-
        eration, the validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pro-
        nouncements, and all those factors which give it power to persuade, if lacking
        power to control.” Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140. The level of deference that may
        apply—Chevron or Skidmore—is not always apparent. See, e.g., Durr v. Shinseki,
        638 F.3d 1342, 1348 (11th Cir. 2011) (noting that we have “applied Chevron level
        deference to an agency handbook when Congress has authorized an agency
        to ‘issue regulations that have the force of law’ and the agency’s handbook has
        been subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking,” but deciding not to deter-
        mine whether Chevron or Skidmore deference applies to certain regulations in
        VA Handbook 5021/6 (citation omitted)).
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        21-10954                Opinion of the Court                         13

        [FLSA].” Brennan v. Great Am. Disc. & Credit Co., 477 F.2d 292, 296–
        97 (5th Cir. 1973) (citing Wirtz, 381 F.2d at 659).
               In sum, then, we have consistently accorded Skidmore defer-
        ence to the interpretative bulletins that now reside in Part 778. See
        Wirtz, 381 F.2d at 659 (citing Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140). So we will
        do so here as well. That means we will accord Part 788 “deference
        proportional to the thoroughness evident in its consideration, the
        validity of its reasoning, its consistency with earlier and later pro-
        nouncements, and all those factors which give it power to per-
        suade.” Raﬀerty v. Denny’s, Inc., 13 F.4th 1166, 1179 (11th Cir. 2021)
        (quoting Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U.S. 142, 159
        (2012)); see also Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140.
                In his complaint, Thompson cites 29 C.F.R. § 778.500 to sup-
        port his claim that his regular rate was $13.00 per hour during the
        year or so that he worked signiﬁcant overtime. Under that rule, an
        employee’s regular rate cannot “vary from week to week inversely
        with the length of the workweek.” Id. § 778.500(b). Citing this
        rule, the Ninth Circuit has observed that an “agreement, practice,
        or device that lowers the hourly rate during statutory overtime
        hours or weeks when statutory overtime is worked is expressly pro-
        hibited under” the Department’s interpretive regulations. Brunozzi
        v. Cable Commc’ns, Inc., 851 F.3d 990, 997 (9th Cir. 2017); see also Les
        A. Schneider & Larry J. Stine, Wage and Hour Law: Compliance and
        Practice § 9:1 (2023) (“The FLSA regulations expressly prohibit any
        agreement, practice, or device that provides for a lower hourly rate
        to be paid during . . . weeks when overtime is worked.”).
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        14                    Opinion of the Court               21-10954

               That prohibition on lowering an employee’s regular rate and
        increasing the hours in his workweek prevents an employer from
        circumventing the FLSA’s overtime requirements. As 29 C.F.R. §
        778.327 demonstrates, this non-circumvention rule prevents an em-
        ployer from playing with an employee’s hours and rates to eﬀec-
        tively avoid paying time-and-a-half for an employee’s overtime
        hours. Otherwise, an employer could use “simple arithmetic” to
        lower an employee’s rate and increase his hours so that he could
        never earn time-and-a-half pay—“no matter how many hours he
        worked.” Id. § 778.327(a).
                Consider an example: our hypothetical employee has
        earned a $7 non-overtime hourly rate while working forty-hour
        workweeks for ten weeks. At the start of week eleven, our hypo-
        thetical employer reduces the employee’s non-overtime hourly rate
        to $6 and schedules him to work sixty hours that week. If we treat
        that new non-overtime hourly rate as the employee’s regular rate
        for his sixty-hour workweek, the employee will gross $420 for that
        sixty-hour workweek. (The employee’s $6 non-overtime hourly
        rate times forty hours equals $240. The employee’s overtime rate
        of $9 (time-and-a-half, based on a $6 non-overtime hourly rate)
        times twenty hours equals $180. The sum of $180 and $240 is
        $420.) But the employee would have earned the same amount if
        the employer simply paid him $7 per hour—the established non-
        overtime hourly rate he earned during his ﬁrst ten non-overtime
        workweeks—for all sixty hours of work ($7 times sixty hours
        equals $420). So by reducing the employee’s non-overtime hourly
        rate to $6 at the start of week eleven, the employer eﬀectively
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        21-10954              Opinion of the Court                      15

        escapes its obligation to pay the employee overtime compensation.
        That kind of arithmetic “is an obvious bookkeeping device de-
        signed to avoid the payment of overtime compensation and is not
        in accord with law.” Id. And this an employer cannot do. Rather,
        the employee’s regular rate of pay “for overtime purposes is, obvi-
        ously, the rate that he earns in the normal non[-]overtime week—
        in this case, $[7] per hour.” Id.
               We ﬁnd that this interpretation has the “power to persuade,”
        Skidmore, 323 U.S. at 140, because it preserves what the Supreme
        Court has said is “the Congressional purpose” behind the FLSA’s
        overtime provisions. Helmerich & Payne, 323 U.S. at 40. As the
        Court has explained, Congress enacted the FLSA’s overtime provi-
        sions “to spread employment by placing ﬁnancial pressure on the
        employer through the overtime pay requirement” and “to compen-
        sate employees for the burden of a workweek in excess of the hours
        ﬁxed in the Act.” Id. (citation omitted).
               The Department’s interpretation of the regular rate serves
        that purpose by prohibiting an employer from using “simple arith-
        metic” to ensure that an employee earns no more than his non-
        overtime hourly rate—“no matter how many hours he work[s].”
        29 C.F.R. § 778.327(a). Without that prohibition, the FLSA would
        neither (1) place “ﬁnancial pressure” on employers to hire addi-
        tional workers instead of scheduling their existing employees to
        work overtime, nor (2) ensure that employees receive additional
        compensation “for the burden of a workweek in excess of the
        hours ﬁxed in the Act.” Helmerich & Payne, 323 U.S. at 40 (citation
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        16                       Opinion of the Court                   21-10954

        omitted). In sum, then, 29 C.F.R. § 778.327 interprets the term
        “regular rate” in a way that prevents employers from nullifying the
        FLSA’s overtime provisions. For that reason, we ﬁnd that the regu-
        lation persuasively interprets the term.
                Applying that interpretation to the allegations in Thomp-
        son’s complaint and viewing those allegations in the light most fa-
        vorable to him, we conclude that Thompson plausibly alleged that
        Regional Security used prohibited arithmetic here. Thompson in-
        itially earned a $13.00 non-overtime hourly rate and worked a
        forty-hour workweek. But soon after Regional Security started
        scheduling Thompson for sixty-hour workweeks, it slashed his
        non-overtime hourly rate to $11.15. Under this new non-overtime
        hourly rate, Thompson would gross $780.50 for a sixty-hour work-
        week—which is only $.50 more than he would have earned if he
        were paid his former $13.00 non-overtime hourly rate for all sixty
        hours of work.4 This arithmetic, together with Thompson’s alle-
        gations that Regional Security paid him $13.00 per hour as a regular
        rate during his initial tenure with the company and during the
        workweeks after it stopped scheduling him for overtime, supports
        the reasonable inference that Regional Security slashed Thomp-
        son’s non-overtime hourly rate to avoid paying him an overtime
        rate equal to one-and-a-half times his established $13.00 rate.

        4Thompson’s weekly average rate of $11.15 multiplied by forty hours equals
        $446. His overtime hourly rate of $16.725—that is, one-and-a-half times
        $11.15—multiplied by twenty overtime hours equals $334.50. The sum of
        $446 and $334.50 is $780.50.
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        21-10954               Opinion of the Court                        17

                Of course, it’s also possible that Regional Security reduced
        Thompson’s weekly average rate for a diﬀerent and permissible
        reason. As we’ve noted, employers like Regional Security can law-
        fully reduce an employee’s weekly average rate, as long as they do
        not do so as a work-around of the FLSA’s overtime-pay require-
        ments. Youngerman-Reynolds, 325 U.S. at 424; see also Schneider &
        Stine, supra, § 9:7 (observing that an employer’s right to reduce an
        employee’s regular rate does not enable an employer “to manipu-
        late the regular rate so as to prevent overtime pay”).
                The diﬀerence between a permissible reduction in an em-
        ployee’s non-overtime hourly rate and an impermissible one comes
        down to whether the rate change “is justiﬁed by no factor other
        than the number of hours” an employee worked. 29 C.F.R. §
        778.327(b); see also Parth, 630 F.3d at 797 (holding that an employer
        “may reduce” an employee’s weekly average rate “so long as the
        rate reduction was not designed to circumvent” the FLSA’s over-
        time provisions). When a reduction in an employee’s non-overtime
        hourly rate is justiﬁed by the length of his workweek, “the device
        is evasive and the rate actually paid in the shorter or non[-]overtime
        week is his regular rate for overtime purposes in all weeks.” 29
        C.F.R. § 778.327(b).
               As we’ve indicated, Thompson’s allegations suggest that Re-
        gional Security ﬂuctuated his non-overtime hourly rate as a device
        to evade paying him overtime. In particular, he alleged that Re-
        gional Security “reduced” his “established” non-overtime hourly
        rate “to an artiﬁcially low rate to avoid the overtime provisions of
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        18                     Opinion of the Court               21-10954

        the FLSA.” He also alleged that Regional Security increased the
        length of his workweek and reduced his non-overtime hourly rate
        from $13.00 to $11.15 to avoid those provisions. During the year
        that Regional Security paid Thompson a reduced non-overtime
        hourly rate and scheduled him to work sixty-hour workweeks,
        Thompson averred, his non-overtime hourly rate across all sixty
        hours of work was $13.00. See supra n.4. And Thompson asserted
        that once Regional Security ceased scheduling him to work over-
        time hours, it restored his non-overtime hourly rate to $13.00.
        Taken as true, these allegations suggest that Regional Security ﬂuc-
        tuated Thompson’s non-overtime hourly rate for the purpose of
        ensuring that he would always earn $13 per hour—“no matter how
        many hours he worked.” 29 C.F.R. § 778.327(a).
               In urging us to reach the opposite conclusion, Regional Se-
        curity distinguishes the “agreement, practice, or device that pro-
        vides for a lower hourly rate to be paid during . . . weeks when
        overtime is worked,” as the regulation prohibits, reasoning that
        Thompson failed to allege that his non-overtime hourly rate “ﬂuc-
        tuated from week to week depending upon whether or not he
        worked overtime hours.” And in a sense, Regional Security is right:
        Thompson alleged that Regional Security paid him a $13.00 non-
        overtime hourly rate and worked overtime hours at time-and-a-
        half based on that rate for seven months before Regional Security
        reduced his non-overtime hourly rate.
               The seven-month period between when Regional Security
        ﬁrst scheduled Thompson to work overtime and when it reduced
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        21-10954                  Opinion of the Court                             19

        his non-overtime hourly rate could support competing inferences.
        For instance, it could suggest that Regional Security changed
        Thompson’s non-overtime rate after seven months because of le-
        gitimate “factor[s] other than the number of hours” in his work-
        week. Id. § 778.327(b). But it could alternatively suggest that Re-
        gional Security tried to camouﬂage the fact that it was attempting
        to circumvent the FLSA when it began eﬀectively paying Thomp-
        son roughly $13.00 for every hour—regular and overtime—that he
        worked during the year or so that followed that seven-month pe-
        riod.
               At this stage, though, we “must accept the facts alleged in
        the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to”
        Thompson. Samara v. Taylor, 38 F.4th 141, 149 (11th Cir. 2022)
        (quoting Cannon, 250 F.3d at 1301); see also Newman v. Advanced Tech.
        Innovation Corp., 749 F.3d 33, 37 (1st Cir. 2014) (explaining that “the
        regular . . . rate . . . is a fact question” (citing Aaron, 334 U.S. at 461)).
        And when we do that, we must conclude that the district court
        erred in granting judgment on the pleadings. Even though
        Thompson alleged that Regional Security reduced his non-over-
        time hourly rate and scheduled him to work overtime in two suc-
        cessive steps, he also alleged that Regional Security simultaneously
        restored his non-overtime hourly rate and ceased scheduling him
        to work overtime. And during the year or so that Thompson
        worked overtime hours at a reduced non-overtime hourly rate, his
        average hourly rate for all those hours, including the overtime
        hours, was the same as his non-overtime hourly rate before the re-
        duction. Those facts plausibly suggest that Regional Security used
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        20                    Opinion of the Court                21-10954

        the ﬂuctuation in Thompson’s weekly average rate as a device to
        avoid paying overtime compensation at one-and-a-half times the
        non-overtime hourly rate that Thompson earned during the weeks
        he did not work overtime hours.
                                       IV.
               Because Thompson’s allegations plausibly suggest that Re-
        gional Security used the ﬂuctuation in his weekly average rate as a
        device to avoid paying him overtime, we vacate the district court’s
        order granting Regional Security’s motion for judgment on the
        pleadings and remand for further proceedings consistent with this
        opinion.
              VACATED AND REMANDED.