In 1999, Congress enacted a new Section 203(y) to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Section 203(y) was designed to relax the rules under which an employer could claim a Section 7(k) partial overtime exemption for paramedics. Before Section 203(y), paramedics had been successful around the country in claiming they should be treated as 40-hour a week employees (rather than 53-hour a week employees under Section 7(k)) because less than 20 percent of their responsibilities involved fire suppression duties.
Under Section 203(y), to be eligible for a Section 7(k) exemption a paramedic must be “trained in fire suppression,” have the “legal authority and responsibility to engage in fire suppression,” and “be engaged in a prevention, control, and extinguishment of fire or response to emergency situations where life, property, or the environment is as risk.”
A group of San Francisco firefighter-paramedics sued the City of San Francisco, contending that they did not have the “responsibility” to engage in fire suppression duties necessary as described in Section 203(y). A federal court rejected their claim, with the Court’s decision turning on the meaning of the word “responsibility” in Section 203(y).
As the Court saw it, “responsibility” did not mean that firefighter-paramedics actually have to fight fires when assigned to ambulances. Rather, it was sufficient if the City imposed on the firefighter-paramedics “the duty to perform the action” if requested to do so by the employer. The Court believed that its definition of “responsibility” was in keeping with the intent of Congress in enacting Section 203(y). The Court cited statements of legislators that Section 203(y) “would ensure that firefighters who are cross-trained as emergency medical technicians, HAZMAT responders and search and rescue specialists would be covered by the exemption even though they may not spend all of their time performing activities directly related to fire protection. These statements reveal a Congressional intent to include within FLSA’s overtime exemption dual-function paramedic-firefighters who respond to emergency medical calls and have the responsibility to engage in fire suppression.”
The Court declined to square its decision with a federal court decision entitled Cleveland v. Los Angeles, a case involving the Los Angeles Fire Department which appeared to reach the contrary result. In the Los Angeles case, the Court found that dual-function paramedics did not have the “responsibility” to engage in fire suppression when assigned to ambulances. The Court in the San Francisco case distinguished the Los Angeles case on the grounds that Los Angeles paramedics were not equipped with breathing apparatuses or “turnout gear” and there was no evidence that the paramedics in Los Angeles were ever ordered to perform fire suppression activities. In contrast, San Francisco paramedics must wear “turnout gear,” and have been ordered to engage in fire suppression activities by their incident commanders.
Since the Court found that the paramedics were covered by the Section 7(k) exemption, the Court dismissed their lawsuit.
Weaver v. City and County of San Francisco, 2004 WL 422626 (N.D.Cal. 2004).