Understanding the SB 1024 Supervisee Cap - Attestly
SB 1024 caps how many supervisees a supervisor can take on in nonexempt settings, effective January 1, 2025. Here's what the cap actually covers and why it's harder to track than it looks.
If you supervise associates in California, you’ve probably heard about SB 1024. Here’s the short version: effective January 1, 2025, a supervisor can take on no more than six supervisees at one time in a nonexempt setting.
That single sentence hides a few details that trip people up.
”Nonexempt setting” is doing a lot of work
The cap only applies in nonexempt settings. Exempt settings — broadly, certain government and educational settings — aren’t subject to the same limit. That means the same supervisor could be well within the cap on paper while actually supervising a much larger group once exempt-setting supervisees are added back in. Knowing which of your worksites are exempt versus nonexempt isn’t optional bookkeeping — it’s the difference between compliant and not.
The cap counts across every employer
This is the part that catches supervisors off guard. The six-supervisee limit isn’t per practice — it’s per supervisor, counted across every employer they supervise at. A supervisor working part-time at two different nonexempt agencies doesn’t get six supervisees at each; they get six, total, everywhere.
That’s a hard thing for any single piece of software to verify on its own. No practice management system can see what a supervisor is doing at a completely separate employer. The honest answer is that this requires the supervisor’s own periodic self-attestation of their full nonexempt-setting caseload, cross-checked against what each practice can independently observe.
Why this matters for associates, not just supervisors
If you’re an associate, your supervisor being over the cap isn’t just their problem. Supervision that occurs outside the rules can jeopardize how that experience counts toward your hours. It’s worth knowing, in plain terms, whether your supervisor is tracking their obligations across every setting they work in — not just yours.
What to actually check
- Is your worksite exempt or nonexempt under the current BBS guidance?
- Does your supervisor supervise associates anywhere else?
- Is there a process for your supervisor to periodically confirm their total caseload, not just the one at your practice?
None of this is exotic. It’s just detail that’s easy to lose track of when the underlying rule set changed in the middle of an ongoing supervision relationship, which is exactly what happened when SB 1024 took effect.