Emmons v. City of Chesapeake

Emmons v. City of Chesapeake

Opinion

 [*247]  WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

The appellants in this case are Battalion Chiefs who have sued their employer, the City of Chesapeake Fire Department (CFD), for non-compliance with the overtime pay requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). ] This requirement represents a general guarantee of overtime pay for employees working over forty hours a week. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1). This general guarantee is, however, subject to a number of exemptions for employees working in managerial, administrative, and professional positions. 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1). The Battalion Chiefs (BCs) argue that none of these exemptions apply to them, both on their own terms and because the BC position [**2]  falls under a regulatory exception, 29 C.F.R. § 541.3(b), that categorically withdraws certain first response workers from the exemptions' scope.

We disagree. Section 541.3(b) does not categorically except the plaintiff BCs from the FLSA's system of exemptions, because the BCs are, first and foremost, managers within the CFD, not frontline firefighters. Nor do the plain terms of the FLSA's exemptions fail to apply. The BCs are executive employees under the FLSA, and it is on this basis that we affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the CFD.

The Chesapeake Fire Department consists of 449 employees spread across five operational divisions. J.A. 664. The CFD maintains an effective organization through the use of a well-defined, hierarchical command structure. The most basic distinction within this hierarchy is that between "chief officers" and everyone else. The "chief officer" category comprises, in order of rank, the Fire Chief, the Deputy Fire Chief, the Division Chiefs, and finally, the BCs. Only sixteen CFD employees hold a chief officer position and, of these sixteen, ten are BCs in the Fire Operations Division. Among the non-chief officers, there is a further bifurcation between Company [**3]  Officers, who have attained the rank of either captain or lieutenant, and firefighters, who range in their ranks from "master" to "trainee."

This command structure allocates between three and four BCs to each of the CFD's three fire battalions. Each battalion consists of five fire stations and their personnel. The upshot of this structure, in terms of command, is that each BC bears responsibility for between six and seven Company Officers and, indirectly, for the thirty-one to forty-six firefighters under them. Each BC works seven 24-hour shifts every twenty-one days.

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