A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a "heightened" burden for employers being sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act, saying that they need only show by a "preponderance of the evidence" that a worker is exempt from the wage-and-hour protections of the 1938 labor law.

The court's decision in EMD Sales v. Sanchez Carrera hands a win to a Washington, D.C.-area food distributor being sued by a group of current and former employees who say the business did not pay them overtime in violation of the FLSA. The distributor argued that the plaintiffs fall under the law's exemption for "outside salesm[e]n," but a federal appeals court found the company had failed to prove that the exemption applies by "clear and convincing" evidence.