Supreme Court's Amazon Ruling Could Make Plaintiffs Think Twice Before Filing FLSA Lawsuits

Author: Michael Cardman, XpertHR Legal Editor

December 9, 2014

A new US Supreme Court ruling may help employers defend themselves against certain Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) working-time claims.

In Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, the Court ruled that a group of Amazon warehouse workers did not need to be paid for time spent undergoing mandatory antitheft security screenings after their work.

The Integrity ruling sets a significant new standard: Just because an employer requires its employees to perform an activity or benefits from them performing an activity does not necessarily mean that they must be paid for that activity.

"It will make plaintiffs' lawyers evaluate more closely whether they have a claim that an employer might settle or go for summary judgment when they know the Supreme Court has given them some very strong language," said Jonathan A. Segal, a partner at Duane Morris LLP. "Some cases that would have settled won't settle now."

For example, Segal predicts it will be more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail in lawsuits seeking compensation for the time they spend waiting for their computers to boot up.

The FLSA requires an employer to pay its employees for all hours worked. However, an employer does not need to pay employees for time spent in activities that take place before or after their principal activity.

In previous rulings, the Supreme Court has held that an employee's principal activity includes anything that is integral and indispensable to his or her job. For example, showering and changing clothes was found to be indispensable to the work of battery plant employees because the chemicals in the plant were toxic to human beings. Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U. S. 247 (U.S. 1956). Likewise, sharpening knives was found to be integral and indispensable to the work of meatpackers because dull knives would "slow down production," among other things. Mitchell v. King Packing Co., 350 U. S. 260 (U.S. 1956).

In the Integrity case, the warehouse workers had argued that the roughly 25 minutes they spent each day waiting in line; removing wallets, keys and belts; and then passing through metal detectors should have been counted as part of their principal activity because it was required by and benefited their employer.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court rejected the employees' claims and reversed a lower court's ruling in their favor.

The security screenings did not count as a principal activity because the workers were not employed to "undergo security screenings, but to retrieve products from warehouse shelves and package those products for shipment," the Court held.

Nor were they integral and indispensable to the workers' primary duty. An activity is integral and indispensable only if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he or she is to perform those activities, the Court added. "The screenings were not an intrinsic element of retrieving products from warehouse shelves or packaging them for shipment. And Integrity Staffing could have eliminated the screenings altogether without impairing the employees' ability to complete their work," the Court concluded.

If the integral and indispensable test could be satisfied simply because an employer required an activity, it would mean employers would have to pay their employees for the very same activities that Congress intended to exclude from the scope of the FLSA when it amended the law in 1947, the ruling states.