Turkish baklava and baked goods chefs suing for overtime pay do not fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s creative professional exemption because their tasks require “consistency and precision, not innovation and imagination,” a Brooklyn federal judge has ruled.

The exemption defense put forward by Gulluoglu, an entity that sells Turkish food from multiple storefronts, including in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and Astoria, Queens, must fail because “although defendants adequately demonstrate that plaintiffs were experienced and talented [chefs], defendants do not demonstrate how plaintiffs’ experience and talent were applied to an innovative and imaginative task,” wrote Chief Judge Dora Irizarry, sitting in the Eastern District of New York, in a decision that denied summary judgment to the defendants.