6th Circuit Opinion On Who Is Exempt from FICA

For those of you who continue to have an interest on how medical residents are treated (a never ending story) for purposes of the Social Security Act, the 6th Circuit has been heard from in USA vs Detroit Medical Center:

The interesting part starts on page 9 of the decision in a discussion of the student exemption to FICA. The court takes exception to the government's argument that all medical residents are per se not students.

Quoting:

To determine whether the doctors in Detroit Medical?s residency program are students, we thus need to know what the residents in the program do and under what circumstances. Yet throughout this case and in related cases in other jurisdictions, the government has taken the position that this kind of fact development plays no role in the inquiry. See Mount Sinai, supra; University of Chicago Hosp. v. United States, 545 F.3d

564 (7th Cir. Sept. 23, 2008). As the government sees the issue, all residents in all medical residencies are not students?that as a per se matter a resident can never be a student.

While the meaning of ?student? indeed is a legal issue, the question whether residents at the Detroit Medical Center come within the term is not.