Tag Archives: FLSA for Fire Departments

A group of seven Santa Fe, New Mexico battalion chiefs have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that their employer, the City of Santa Fe, denied them overtime in violation of the FLSA. More specifically, the battalion chiefs claim that the city misclassifies them as overtime exempt “white-collar” employees. Additionally, the chiefs claim that this misclassification results in a violation of ...

A former City of Hamilton, Ohio, firefighter has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the Hamilton Fire Department violated both the FLSA and the Ohio Minimum Fair Wage Standards Act by “clawing back” a retention bonus in a way that caused his final paycheck to go below minimum wage. The lawsuit was filed in federal court this past Friday by ...

A federal lawsuit has been filed against the Briar Reno Fire Department, Inc., alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in how the department pays its firefighters. The complaint, which was filed by a lone former firefighter in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on June 30, 2025 contains allegations of unpaid overtime and misclassification. According ...

Osceola County, Florida, and a group of fourteen current and former fire department battalion chiefs have reached a settlement following a 2024 misclassification lawsuit. The battalion chiefs claimed that the county misclassified them as overtime exempt executives in violation of the FLSA. The county countered that the battalion chiefs were “properly classified” and denied all of their claims. However, according ...

The Rye Fire Protection District, located in Colorado City, Colorado is facing a lawsuit filed by three of its firefighters. The firefighters claim that the district’s pay practices violate both the FLSA and state law. More specifically, the firefighters make several claims related to the FLSA including the District’s failure to pay overtime due to improper usage of the FLSA’s ...

The Bartlesville, Oklahoma City Council is poised to approve a settlement offer intended to resolve a lawsuit filed in federal court last week by 75 current and former city firefighters. The firefighters’ complaint contains allegations that the city violated the FLSA by failing to include “various stipends” in their regular rate of pay. According to the complaint, these stipends include: ...

Two similar FLSA lawsuits have been filed by firefighters from two different West Virginia cities in the past week. The first, which my friend and colleague Curt Varone covered on his Fire Law Blog last Wednesday, contained allegations that the City of Clarksburg was improperly calculating its firefighter’s regular rate of pay in violation of the FLSA. [You can find ...

Lockheed Martin [a global aerospace and defense contractor] has settled a 2022 FLSA lawsuit filed by a group of forty-nine industrial firefighters for a total of $949,996. The crux of the firefighter’s claims was that Lockheed Martin only paid its in-house firefighters’ overtime after they worked more than 48 hours per week. The FLSA requires non-public agency fire departments, pay ...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has rejected an appeal filed by the City of New York following a 2019 jury verdict that awarded almost $18 million in unpaid wages, overtime, and damages to a class of more than 2,500 FDNY EMTs and paramedics. This most recent decision “might” signal an end to this long and ...

Tensions between firefighters and their fire chief are running high in Jackson, Mississippi over firefighter pay and the chief’s newly proposed budget. The chief’s proposed budget, which does not include any pay raises for city firefighters has the firefighters seeing red. As a result, Jackson firefighters are pushing back against their fire chief and requesting a vote of “no confidence” ...