Chapter 2 built the exempt employee test from three separate pieces — salary basis, salary level, and primary duty — and treated all three as required for an exempt executive, administrative, or professional employee. Teaching, and the practice of law or medicine, are carve-outs from that structure: professions where salary doesn’t decide exempt status at all. Under § 541.600(e), the salary requirements built out through the rest of that part — both the salary basis test and the salary level test — do not apply to employees engaged as teachers, or to employees actually practicing law or medicine under a valid license. A teacher, a practicing lawyer, or a practicing physician is an exempt professional regardless of how, or how little, they’re paid.

The teaching exemption turns on the work, not the credential. It covers any employee whose primary duty is teaching, tutoring, instructing, or lecturing — imparting knowledge — while employed as a teacher by an educational establishment (an elementary or secondary school system, an institution of higher education, or other educational institution). That reaches far beyond the classroom teacher with a chalkboard: regular academic teachers, kindergarten and nursery school teachers, teachers of gifted or disabled children, teachers of skilled and semi-skilled trades, driving instructors, aircraft flight instructors, home economics teachers, and music instructors are all named exempt teachers. Faculty who also coach athletics or advise drama, speech, debate, or journalism are still engaged in teaching. A state teaching certificate is a clear marker of who the exemption reaches, and it qualifies a teacher no matter what the state calls it — permanent, provisional, emergency, or otherwise. But a certificate isn’t required everywhere: public and private elementary and secondary schools alike are not uniform in requiring one, and a certificate is generally unnecessary for employment in higher education or other educational establishments. So an uncertified teacher can still be exempt if the school actually employs them as a teacher.

The law and medicine exemption is narrower, and just as tied to actual work. It reaches an employee who holds a valid license or certificate to practice law or medicine and is actually engaged in that practice, plus an employee who holds the degree required for the general practice of medicine and is serving an internship or residency program toward that practice. In medicine, that covers physicians broadly — general practitioners and specialists, osteopathic physicians, podiatrists, dentists, and optometrists among them. It does not, however, stretch to cover everyone who works in medicine: § 541.600(e) specifically holds pharmacists, nurses, therapists, technologists, sanitarians, dietitians, social workers, psychologists, psychometrists, and other professions that service the medical profession to the ordinary salary basis and salary level tests from Chapter 2, even though their work supports medical practice.