Topeka ? Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has joined a group of states asking a federal appeals court to strike down new federal regulations that would require the state to pay overtime wages for home health workers employed through the state Medicaid program.

Schmidt announced Monday that he, along with eight other state attorneys general, filed a friend of the court brief in a case challenging those new rules. That case is now pending before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

“Once again a federal government agency is issuing regulations in an area that Congress gave them no authority to regulate,” Schmidt said in a statement. “These new rules will put a tremendous burden on Kansas senior citizens and their families who hire home health workers, and the result in parts of Kansas will be that needed services become less available.”

The case challenges new regulations that were scheduled to go into effect in January.

Since 1974, health care workers who provide in-home “companion care” to the elderly or disabled have been exempt from federal minimum and overtime wage laws. Companion care is non-medical care such as bathing and sleep monitoring that enables those patients to remain in their homes instead of going into a nursing home.

In 2011, however, the Obama administration proposed new rules that said the exemption applies only to those workers employed directly by the person receiving the care, but not to those employed by third parties, including state governments.

According to the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, that change could affect as many as 15,000 home health workers statewide, at an estimated cost of $36 million a year.

“These are important issues for the many frail elderly and disabled Kansans who rely on the services of home health care workers to maintain their independence at home and remain in their home communities,” KDADS Secretary Kari Bruffett said.

Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for the agency, said that for many years Kansas has had a policy of “self-directed” care, meaning that the patients or their families personally hire and train the home health aides, although the money for their wages comes through the state Medicaid program.

For that reason, she said, Kansas considers them to be employees of the individual patients, and since many of those workers provide services to multiple patients each day, it would be difficult to determine which patient would be responsible for paying overtime wages.

The U.S. Department of Labor, however, considers those workers to be employed by the state, and thus would be covered by the new rule governing third-party care givers.

In December, a federal district court judge struck down the new rules, which require overtime wages for all work beyond 40 hours a week and which also restrict the kinds of services that qualify as “companion care.”

The Labor Department is appealing that ruling. In a statement in January the agency said: “We believe the Rule is legally sound and is the right policy–both for those employees, whose demanding work merits these fundamental wage guarantees, and for recipients of services, who deserve a stable and professional workforce allowing them to remain in their homes and communities.”

A decision from the appellate court is expected later this year.