Ferrell v. Gwinnett County Bd. of Educ., 2007 WL 962853 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 30, 2007)
A federal district court in Georgia has ruled that police officers employed by a school district as school resource officers (SROs) are exempt employees within the meaning of the federal Fair Standards Labor Act (FLSA) and, therefore, not entitled to overtime pay. The court concluded that the SROs met the “administrative” exemption from FLSA’s overtime provisions. Rather than relying exclusively on local law enforcement to provide safety and security within its schools, the Gwinnett County School System (GCSS) established an SRO program. SROS are highly qualified and experienced police officers who carry out a number of duties in addition to patrol and crime prevention, including providing administrators and faculty with advice on safety and security issues; training administrators, faculty, and parents regarding safety issues; and preparing and teaching classes to students on personal safety, bus safety, drugs and alcohol, and gang awareness. The SROs sued GCSS over whether they were entitled to overtime. GCSS countered that the type of work performed by SROs falls within the FLSA’s administrative exemption.
The court began by referring to the three-part regulatory definition of an “employee employed in a bona fide administrative capacity”: (1) the employee is compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate of not less than $455 per week; (2) the employee’s primary duty is performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or employer’s customers; and (3) the employee’s primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. That the SROs met the first prong was undisputed. As to the second prong, the court found that most of the SROs’ time is spent on the non-manual tasks described above, and that, “If [GCSS] placed a primary value solely on the duties that a rank and file police officer performs, it presumably would have relied upon the local police department at a much lower cost.” Any manual activities performed “were only incidental to [the SROs’] overarching primary duty to provide safety and security … which is, on the whole, a non-manual job.” As for the third prong, the court acknowledged that police officers ordinarily do not satisfy this element but agreed with GCSS that there is a critical distinction between police officers and SROs: the fundamental difference in the nature of their respective employers’ businesses. Because law enforcement agencies are in the business of protecting the general public, their officers are line workers engaged in services like patrolling and crime prevention that are of a more manual nature. SROs, in contrast, are employed by the school district, whose business is educating students. As result, the court held, they are not line workers on a par with police officers but more like U.S. Postal Service inspectors, which both the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the courts have recognized as administratively exempt under the FLSA. Finally, the court concluded that the SROs’ primary duty involves the exercise of independent judgment and discretion with respect to matters of significance.
Ferrell v. Gwinnett County Bd. of Educ., 2007 WL 962853 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 30, 2007)
[Editor’s Note: On February 15, 2007, the DOL issued an opinion letter, summarized below at the first link, concluding that SROs in two counties qualified for the administrative exemption under FLSA. The second link is to a summary of a December 2006 U.S. district court ruling that a Texas school district’s athletic trainers fell under the FLSA exemption for “learned professionals.”]
[NSBA School Law pages on DOL opinion letter]
[NSBA summary of Villega v. El Paso Indep. Sch. Dist.]