Alex v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 21 July 1994
• Docket Number: Nos. 93-2627,93-2630,s. 93-2627
• Citation: 29 F.3d 1235
• Parties: 2 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 321 James M. ALEX, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, Defendant-Appellant. Michael M. McKITTRICK, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1235

29 F.3d 1235

2 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 321

James M. ALEX, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, Defendant-Appellant.

Michael M. McKITTRICK, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, Defendant-Appellant.

Nos. 93-2627, 93-2630.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 22, 1994.

Decided July 21, 1994.

Thomas A. Woodley (argued), Mulholland & Hickey, Washington, DC, Stephen B. Horwitz, Jacobs, Burns, Sugarman & Orlove, Chicago, IL, for plaintiffs-appellees in No. 93-2627.

Lawrence Rosenthal, Deputy Corp. Counsel, Mardell Nereim (argued), Benna R. Solomon, Susan S. Sher, Office of the Corp. Counsel, Appeals Div., Chicago, IL, for defendant-appellant in No. 93-2627.

Robert S. Sugarman, Stephen B. Horwitz, Jacobs, Burns, Sugarman & Orlove, Chicago, IL, Thomas A. Woodley (argued), Mulholland & Hickey, Washington, DC, for plaintiffs-appellees in No. 93-2630.

Jennifer Naber, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Lawrence Rosenthal, Deputy Corp. Counsel, Mardell Nereim (argued), Kelly R. Welsh, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Benna R. Solomon, Susan

S. Sher, Jennifer J. Ranger, Office of the Corp. Counsel, Appeals Div., Chicago, IL, for defendant-appellant in No. 93-2630.

Before BAUER and FLAUM, Circuit Judges, and GRANT, District Judge. ^*

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

These consolidated cases involve identical claims by current and former paramedic employees of the Fire Department of the City of Chicago that they are entitled to overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week, in accordance with section 7(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 207(a)(1). The City asserts nonliability under section 7(k) of the Act which establishes a limited exemption from the overtime provision for employees in "fire protection activities," 29 U.S.C. Sec. 207(k). There being no material facts in dispute, the plaintiffs and the City filed cross motions for summary judgment. The district court found for the plaintiffs as to liability; the parties then reached agreement as to the computation of damages should the district court's orders survive appellate review. ¹ They do.

I.

A.

Because the nature of the paramedics' duties and training is crucial to the application of the relevant law in this area, we will describe the role of paramedics within the Chicago Fire Department as agreed by the parties below. The Fire Department is organized into five divisions: (1) the Bureau of Fire Suppression and Rescue; (2) the Bureau of Fire Prevention; (3) the Bureau of Administrative Services; (4) the Bureau of Support Services; and (5) the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services. Regular fire fighters and rescue personnel fall under the authority of the Bureau of Fire Suppression and Rescue, while paramedics serve in the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Eligibility, qualifications and job classifications are different for paramedics and fire fighters. However, the same collective bargaining unit and agreement covers both paramedics and firefighters, and paramedics are on the same pay scale, receive the same benefits and participate in the same pension fund as firefighters. Paramedics are assigned to ambulances located in Chicago fire stations. Like firefighters, paramedics normally work a platoon schedule consisting of 24 hours on duty, followed by 48 hours off duty, with every fifth workday off--amounting to 120 hours of duty in an eighteen-day work cycle.

The basic mission of the paramedics is to provide emergency medical care, life support (basic and advanced) and transportation to hospitals for injured or ill people. The paramedics are certified by the State of Illinois as Emergency Medical Technicians-Paramedic, and each must undergo at least forty hours per year of continuing education in medical services to maintain certification; the Bureau of EMS provides ongoing training. The paramedics are not trained, expected or allowed to perform fire suppression or rescue services. They may not enter burning buildings or smoke-laden areas and are subject to discipline if they engage in fire fighting activities. Paramedics must remain in an area away from the immediate scene of a fire and do not treat victims until they have been safely evacuated from the fire vicinity. Fire fighters and specialized rescue personnel extricate victims from hazardous situations paramedics do not. They have not been taught how to use, and do not carry, hydraulic jacks, cutting torches, saws, ropes or other extrication equipment. Paramedics may, however, provide life support to stabilize an entrapped victim while fire fighters or rescue personnel are attempting extrication. While paramedics may not work to free a physically entrapped victim, brief deposition testimony indicated that at one time some paramedics (who attended a continuing education program) were shown how to use backboards and similar devices to safely remove injured automobile accident victims from their vehicles.

Paramedics are not automatically dispatched to all fires, crime scenes or accidents; they are sent out only when there is a report of injury or substantial likelihood of injury. In a typical year, at least half of paramedic responses involve nontraumatic, noncardiac medical emergencies; e.g. epileptic seizures, asthma attacks, diabetic reactions, emphysema-related episodes. Less than one percent are fire-related and less than five percent are violence or law-enforcement-related. In 1990, for example, Chicago Fire Department paramedics responded to 212,367 calls: 111,133 (52.3%) were medical emergencies, 79,370 (37.4%) were trauma emergencies, 8,227 (3.9%) were cardiac emergencies, 7,136 (3.4%) were obstetric emergencies, and 2,452 (1.2%) were psychiatric emergencies. ² (The remaining calls were either for additional units or for non-emergencies.) Of the calls, 1,476 (0.7%) were from fire scenes, 26,590 (12.5%) were from scenes of vehicular accidents (of all sorts), 6,557 (3.1%) were from shooting or stabbing incidents, and 2,600 (1.2%) involved drug overdoses. The Chicago Police Department was present at 52,394 (24.7%) of the response scenes; fire suppression personnel were at 37,875 (17.8%). (Fire suppression personnel sometimes respond to non-fire calls for a variety of reasons not quantitatively categorizable on this record.) When the paramedics are not responding to calls, they spend most of their time cleaning and maintaining equipment and supplies at their stations.

B.

Section 7(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay their employees overtime compensation of one-and-one-half times their normal wage for hours worked in excess of forty hours per week. Since 1985, it has been clear that state and local government employers do not enjoy constitutional immunity from the strictures of the Act, which Congress, in 1974, had extended to explicitly cover them. See Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 533-34, 557, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 1008-09, 1010, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985). However, section 7(k) of the Act, also added in 1974, provides a partial exemption for public agency employers of law enforcement and fire protection personnel by upping the threshold at which overtime compensation entitlement begins. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 207(k). Under the statutory scheme as put into effect by the Labor Department, employees to whom the fire protection exemption applies do not receive overtime compensation until hours worked during an applicable work cycle exceed a rate of fifty-three hours per week; law enforcement employees are entitled to overtime pay when their work rate exceeds forty-three hours per week. See 29 C.F.R. Secs. 553.201(a), 553.230(c).

Since April 15, 1986--the date declared by Congress, in the aftermath of Garcia, as the compliance deadline for local governments with section 7 of the Act, see Pub.L. 99-150, Sec. 2(c)(1)--the City of Chicago has treated Fire Department paramedics as subject to the Sec. 7(k) fire protection exemption by only paying them overtime compensation for hours worked in excess of 136 hours per eighteen-day cycle (i.e. fifty-three hours per week over 18 days). These suits represent an effort by the paramedics to establish that Sec. 7(k) does not apply to them at all, or, in the alternative, applies to them as law enforcement rather than fire protection employees (thus entitling them to overtime pay for work in excess of 110 hours per eighteen-day cycle). Relying on Labor Department regulations and letter rulings interpreting the statutory language, the district court found that Chicago Fire Department paramedics do not fall within the scope of Sec. 7(k) and are fully entitled to overtime compensation for hours worked in excess of forty hours per week as generally set out in Sec. 7(a).

II.

Section 7(k) only covers "employee[s] in fire protection activities or ... law enforcement activities." Plaintiffs first contend that this passage alone should dispose of this appeal because its "unambiguous language" does not reach employees whose duties are medical and not related to the extinguishment or control of fires. They are right that when statutory meaning is clear with respect to the issue at bar judicial inquiry normally should end without heed to the embellishments of secondary materials like legislative history, regulations or administrative rulings. See Connecticut National Bank v. Germain, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 1149, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992); Board of Governors v. Dimension Fin. Corp., 474 U.S. 361, 368, 106 S.Ct. 681, 685-86, 88 L.Ed.2d 691 (1986) (citing Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-43, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-82, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984)). They are wrong, however, to suggest that there is no ambiguity as to whether Fire Department paramedics are employees engaged in "fire protection activities." As the district court noted, "fire protection" has a potentially broader connotative sweep than a...