Matthew Purushotham
Fri., November 15, 2024
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), law enforcement personnel are employees empowered by State or local ordinance to enforce laws designed to maintain peace and order, protect life and property, and to prevent and detect crimes, who have the power to arrest, and who have undergone training in law enforcement. The FLSA’s baseline overtime provisions require employers to pay nonexempt employees time and one-half pay for all hours of work over 40 in a seven-day workweek. However, section 207(k) of the FLSA allows public employers to utilize a work period of between 7 and 28 days for law enforcement employees. When such employees work more than the threshold number of hours set for the specific work period (ranging from 43 hours per week for a seven-day work period to 171 hours per 28-day work period), they are due time and one-half pay for those hours. Employees are not subject to the partial 207(k) law enforcement exemption if they spend more than 20 percent of their work period in non-law enforcement activities.
On October 22, 2024, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed an appellate court ruling that reinstating a class action filed by a Georgia State trooper to recover overtime pay for time spent in trooper school. The plaintiff filed the suit on behalf of himself and 400 other state troopers who were allegedly denied around $4.8 million in overtime pay. The case is Georgia Department of Public Safety v. Justice, Case No. S23G1170.
The trial court had dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the state had sovereign immunity with respect to the FLSA claims and that it had not waived that immunity. The doctrine of sovereign immunity means that the “sovereign” (in this case, the State) cannot be sued unless it consents. In this case, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s conclusion that the state trooper’s employment contract functioned as a waiver of sovereign immunity. The Georgia Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court to address the merits of the case, which include whether FLSA overtime pay was part of the plaintiff’s employment contract and whether the Department of Public Safety breached that contract.
McGillivary Steele Elkin LLP represents employees, in asserting their workplace rights, recovering unpaid overtime, and correcting misclassification of workers. If you are concerned that your employer has violated your rights in any of these areas, contact us at info@mselaborlaw.com.
