In a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court held Tuesday that time employees spend going through an employer’s theft-prevention security screening process is not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) because the screening is not “integral and indispensable” to the worker’s principal activities. Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, No. 13-1433 (Dec. 9, 2014).
The Integrity employees involved in this case were warehouse workers who gathered products for packaging and shipping for Amazon.com. The employees were required to go through antitheft security screening before leaving the warehouse at the end of their shifts. The screening involved employees removing items from their pockets and going through metal detectors.
In 2010, two employees filed suit alleging that the daily 25 minutes spent going through the screening process was compensable. A federal district court dismissed the complaint, but the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the screening was “necessary” to the employees’ jobs and undertaken for the employer’s benefit.
In his opinion, Justice Thomas said that the employees could not show that the screens were “integral and indispensable” to their principal work activities, which is the standard governing whether the time is compensable under the FLSA. “An activity is . . . integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities.”
Integrity’s security screenings were not compensable postliminary activities because they “were not the ‘principal activity or activities which [the] employee is employed to perform.’” Integrity employees were hired to “retrieve products from warehouse shelves or package[e] them for shipment[;]” they were not hired to go through security screens. “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 employee’s ability to complete their work.”
Justice Thomas said that the Ninth Circuit erred when it focused on whether Integrity required the activity. “The integral and indispensable test is tied to the productive work that the employee is employed to perform” (emphasis in original) and does not turn on whether the employee required the activity or benefited therefrom.
Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence recognizes that the screenings were “akin to checking in and out and waiting in line to do so—activities that Congress clearly deemed to be preliminary or postliminary.”