Who this is for: Salaried case managers, community support specialists, targeted case managers, and peer support staff at community mental health centers and behavioral health agencies.
What's going on: The agency pays a salary, calls the job exempt, and expects crisis calls, home visits, and late-night notes with no overtime.
What you can do: Check what your job actually requires. If it's a bachelor's degree and not a clinical license, the overtime may be owed for up to three years back.
A behavioral health case manager whose job requires only a bachelor's degree is usually not exempt from overtime: that job doesn't fit the professional exemption, and coordinating services isn't exempt administrative work.
You link clients to housing, benefits, psychiatric care, and treatment. You document every contact. You carry a caseload and chase a billable-unit target. Many agencies post the job as salaried and exempt.
They called you exempt. That isn't their call to make. The employer has to prove an exemption applies, by a preponderance of the evidence.1 A salary alone never settles it. The pay has to be a true salary of at least $684 a week, and the duties have to fit an exemption too.
Titles that often get the exempt label:
Duties decide it, not the title.
The professional exemption covers work requiring advanced knowledge "customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction".2
The Department of Labor applied that test to agency caseworkers whose only academic requirement was a bachelor's degree in the social sciences. Its answer, in a 2005 opinion letter:3 "The course of study for a bachelor's degree in 'social sciences' does not constitute the 'specialized' academic training necessary to qualify an occupation for the learned professional exemption." The caseworkers "do not meet the requirements of the learned professional exemption."
If your job posting asks for a bachelor's in psychology, sociology, social work, or a related field, that is a generalist requirement of the same kind.
In a 2007 opinion letter,4 the DOL looked at case managers at a service provider for people with disabilities. They assessed needs, wrote plans of care, and lined up services. The DOL said that work related to "ongoing, day-to-day case management services for its consumers" and concluded: "Case Managers employed by your client do not qualify for the administrative exemption under section 13(a)(1)."
Behavioral health case management is the service the agency delivers and bills for. That's the agency's product, not the running of the agency.
Straight answer: a licensed clinician with a master's degree, doing clinical work in that field, on a true salary of at least $684 a week, may be an exempt professional. The DOL said in its 2005 letter that social workers with a master's degree in social work, working in their field, generally meet the exemption.3
But the degree has to be what the job requires. If your agency fills the same case manager role with licensed and unlicensed staff, the license isn't a requirement of the job. The Fifth Circuit rejected the professional exemption on that kind of record in Clark v. Centene Co. of Texas,5 where the case manager job was open to vocational nurses.
Nonprofit status doesn't take an agency outside the FLSA. The Act covers any enterprise operating "an institution primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, or the mentally ill or defective who reside on the premises of such institution" "regardless of whether or not such hospital, institution, or school is public or private or operated for profit or not for profit".6
Residential programs fit that language. Outpatient-only centers are covered through the $500,000 enterprise test7 or through individual coverage, which turns on the facts. Only activities performed for a business purpose count toward the dollar test; charitable activities “not in substantial competition with other businesses do not result in the organizations being considered covered enterprises.”12 The Department of Labor's guidance does not address Medicaid reimbursement or grant funding, so how that revenue counts is a fact question.
You don't need your own time sheets. Behavioral health agencies log every billable contact: date, start time, length, client. Those notes sit in the electronic record with timestamps.
When the employer's time records are missing or wrong, workers can prove their hours by "just and reasonable inference," and the burden shifts to the employer to rebut it.8 Billable targets plus documentation, drive time, and meetings often add up past 40.
| Role | Typical requirement | Likely status |
|---|---|---|
| Case manager / targeted case manager | Bachelor's in a human-services field | Usually not exempt |
| Community support or PSR specialist | Bachelor's or less | Usually not exempt |
| Peer support specialist | Lived experience plus state certification | Not a learned professional |
| Licensed clinician doing therapy | Master's plus license | May be exempt on a salary of $684+/week |
| Any of these, paid hourly | Any | Owed overtime |
Siegel Law Group has recovered more than $100 million for workers in federal overtime cases, including a $38.7 million class and collective settlement in Pruess v. Presbyterian Health Plan,9 where the firm was lead counsel. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
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No. Salary is only one part. The duties also have to fit an exemption, and bachelor's-level case management usually doesn't.
Only if the job requires that master's and you do work in that field. If the posting accepts a bachelor's, the exemption is in trouble.
Not legally. Retaliating against an employee for filing a complaint or taking part in an FLSA case is illegal.11 See retaliation protections.
Two years from each paycheck, or three if the violation was willful, plus an equal amount in liquidated damages unless the employer proves good faith.
Free, confidential case review: (214) 790-4454.
We take overtime cases on contingency. We advance the costs of the case, and if we recover, those costs are repaid out of the recovery. If we do not recover, you owe us nothing — no attorney's fee and no costs.
Automated chat. Not legal advice, not a substitute for an attorney, and using it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Send your job title and how you are paid — no documents, no detailed case facts. An inquiry does not by itself stop the firm from representing someone else in a related matter.
Attorney advertising. Jack L. Siegel of Siegel Law Group PLLC, Dallas, Texas, is responsible for this content.
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