{"id":348,"date":"2009-02-22T17:35:40","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T22:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/?p=348"},"modified":"2009-02-22T17:35:40","modified_gmt":"2009-02-22T22:35:40","slug":"us-department-of-labor-issues-opinion-letter-on-certified-occupational-therapist-assistants-and-the-learned-professional-exemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/2009\/02\/us-department-of-labor-issues-opinion-letter-on-certified-occupational-therapist-assistants-and-the-learned-professional-exemption\/","title":{"rendered":"US Department of Labor Issues Opinion Letter on Certified Occupational Therapist Assistants and the Learned Professional Exemption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;\">The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dol.gov\/esa\/whd\/opinion\/FLSA\/2008\/2008_12_19_17_FLSA.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Opinion Letter FLSA2008-17<\/a><span style=\"color: black;\">. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;\">This Opinion Letter clarifies that <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">Certified Occupational Therapist Assistants (COTAs)<span style=\"color: black;\"> employed by a school district do not qualify as either exempt professionals or exempt administrative employees in educational establishments. The COTAs were requesting to be reclassified from nonexempt paraprofessionals to exempt professional employees.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Default\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">The educational requirement for COTAs \u201cis that which is sufficient to obtain certification by the state Board of Occupational Therapy Examiners.\u201d This requires \u201cat least 60 academic semester credits or the equivalent from an accredited institution of higher education.\u201d The DOL ruled that completion of only \u201c60 semester hours does not qualify as a \u2018prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.\u2019\u201d Additionally, COTAs do not meet the standards to qualify as registered or certified medical technologists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;\">Also, since COTAs primary duty is related to the health of the students, they do not qualify under the administrative exemption for employees in educational establishments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;\">State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact <a href=\"mailto:info@visionpayroll.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: purple;\">Vision Payroll<\/span><\/a> if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2008-17. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This Opinion Letter clarifies that Certified Occupational Therapist Assistants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[154,787,82,786,76,151,45,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}