Sixth Circuit: Computer Employee Exemption Turns On Duties, Not Degrees

On October 29, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held in Bennink v. Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co., LLC that an IT engineer who designed, developed, and documented his employer’s automated phone-routing system was an exempt “computer employee” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). He had no formal training in computer systems or coding. He didn’t write the code himself. And he spent a good chunk of his time on project management. None of that mattered. What counts, the Court explained, is the employee’s “actual duties.” The decision is one of the few appellate rulings to take a close look at the current version of the computer employee exemption; by the Court’s own count, no other circuit has conducted an in-depth analysis of it.