Attorneys for Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. on Tuesday said a lawsuit filed against the company in New Jersey represented a “dismissive attitude” toward a court order that halted the contentious Obama-era labor rule that made millions of workers eligible for overtime.

Chipotle's lawyers, in a rare motion for contempt, asked a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to sanction the lawyers who sued Chipotle for alleged overtime violations. A former worker in that case claimed Chipotle was required to enforce the overtime rule, despite an injunction that chilled enforcement of the rule around the country.

The 2016 U.S. Department of Labor regulation updated the federal salary threshold for overtime eligibility for the first time in 12 years, from $23,660 to $47,476. It made 4.2 million workers newly eligible for overtime pay. After 21 states and a coalition of business groups argued in a lawsuit that the U.S. Labor Department's enforcement of the rule would be harmful to their bottom lines, a Texas judge in late November blocked the rule. The Labor Department filed an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The case is pending there.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in June sought to test the scope of that law. The firms that brought the case—Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, Outten & Golden, and Green Savits—argued on behalf of former Chipotle worker Carmen Alvarez that the overtime rule is still in effect, despite the injunction, and companies that decided not to comply are violating federal labor laws.

In its answer to the lawsuit in New Jersey, Chipotle, represented by the firms Messner Reeves and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, said the company did intend to comply with the overtime regulation until the injunction was issued. It maintains the overtime rule is not effective and therefore does not apply to its workers.

Chipotle took the fight a step further with the motion in Texas court filing Tuesday.

The company, represented in Texas by the firm Cantey Hanger, argued that Alvarez and her counsel from Cohen Milstein, Outten & Golden and Green Savits violated the Texas judge's order in filing the lawsuit.

Laura Hilton Hallmon of Cantey Hanger in Fort Worth and Abigail Nitka of Messner Reeves in New York did not respond to requests for comment.

The motion for contempt argued that the Texas court order was intended to have nationwide effect and the attorneys did not have standing to file any suit against the order. The motion requested that the lawsuit in New Jersey be halted. Chipotle requested reasonable legal fees and costs incurred from connection with the suit.

Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

“Ms. Alvarez and her counsels' dismissive attitude towards this court and disregard for the sanctity of its order—at Chipotle's expense—cannot be condoned,” Chipotle's lawyers at Cantey Hanger said in their Texas filing.

Joseph Sellers, a partner at Cohen Milstein in Washington, called Chipotle's motion a very unusual move.

“It's ultimately a misguided defense tactic to threaten the plaintiff and lawyers rather than defend the merits of the case,” Sellers said. “The proper recourse is to engage in briefing on the question, not to run to another forum. This is a wholly unnecessary and gratuitous attack.”

In June, the U.S. Labor Department told a federal appeals court that while it intends to revise the Obama-era rule that made millions of workers eligible for overtime pay the agency will continue to defend its authority to create and enforce such a regulation.

In a brief filed in the lawsuit challenging the rule, the Labor Department urged the Fifth Circuit to “lift the cloud” created by a Texas trial judge's broad conclusion that any salary-level test adopted by the agency would be unlawful.

The Labor Department said in its court filing that it has not decided to advocate for a specific salary level and intends instead to determine what that level should be.