Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk

• Decision Date: 09 December 2014
• Docket Number: No. 13–433.,13–433.
• Parties: INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC., Petitioner v. Jesse BUSK et al.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

574 U.S. 27

135 S.Ct. 513

190 L.Ed.2d 410

INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC., Petitioner

v.Jesse BUSK et al.

No. 13–433.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Oct. 8, 2014.

Decided Dec. 9, 2014.

Paul D. Clement, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.

Curtis E. Gannon, for the United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the petitioner.

Mark R. Thierman, Reno, NV, for Respondents.

Neil M. Alexander, Rick D. Roskelley, Roger L. Grandgenett II, Cory Glen Walker, Littler Mendelson, Las Vegas, NV, Paul D. Clement, Counsel of Record, Jeffrey M. Harris, Barbara A. Smith, Bancroft PLLC, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.

Mark R. Thierman, Counsel of Record, Joshua D. Buck, Thierman Law Firm, P.C., Reno, NV, Eric Schnapper, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, WA for Respondents.

Justice THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The employer in this case required its employees, warehouse workers who retrieved inventory and packaged it for shipment, to undergo an antitheft security screening before leaving the warehouse each day. The question presented is whether the employees' time spent waiting to undergo and undergoing those security screenings is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq., as amended by the Portal–to–Portal Act of 1947, § 251 et seq. We hold that the time is not compensable. We therefore reverse the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

I

Petitioner Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., provides warehouse staffing to Amazon.com throughout the United States. Respondents Jesse Busk and Laurie Castro worked as hourly employees of Integrity Staffing at warehouses in Las Vegas and Fenley, Nevada, respectively. As warehouse employees, they retrieved products from the shelves and packaged those products for delivery to Amazon customers.

Integrity Staffing required its employees to undergo a security screening before leaving the warehouse at the end of each day. During this screening, employees removed items such as wallets, keys, and belts from their persons and passed through metal detectors.

In 2010, Busk and Castro filed a putative class action against Integrity Staffing on behalf of similarly situated employees in the Nevada warehouses for alleged violations of the FLSA and Nevada labor laws. As relevant here, the employees alleged that they were entitled to compensation under the FLSA for the time spent waiting to undergo and actually undergoing the security screenings. They alleged that such time amounted to roughly 25 minutes each day and that it could have been reduced to a de minimis amount by adding more security screeners or by staggering the termination of shifts so that employees could flow through the checkpoint more quickly. They also alleged that the screenings were conducted "to prevent employee theft" and thus occurred "solely for the benefit of the employers and their customers." App. 19, 21.

The District Court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, holding that the time spent waiting for and undergoing the security screenings was not compensable under the FLSA. It explained that, because the screenings occurred after the regular work shift, the employees could state a claim for compensation only if the screenings were an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities they were employed to perform. The District Court held that these screenings were not integral and indispensable but instead fell into a noncompensable category of postliminary activities.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed in relevant part. 713 F.3d 525 (2013). The Court of Appeals asserted that postshift activities that would ordinarily be classified as noncompensable postliminary activities are nevertheless compensable as integral and indispensable to an employee's principal activities if those postshift activities are necessary to the principal work performed and done for the benefit of the employer. Id., at 530. Accepting as true the allegation that Integrity Staffing required the security screenings to prevent employee theft, the Court of Appeals concluded that the screenings were "necessary" to the employees' primary work as warehouse employees and done for Integrity Staffing's benefit. Id., at 531.

We granted certiorari, 571 U.S. 1236 134 S.Ct. 1490, 188 L.Ed.2d 374 (2014), and now reverse.

II

A

Enacted in 1938, the FLSA established a minimum wage and overtime compensation for each hour worked in excess of 40 hours in each workweek. §§ 6(a)(1), 7(a)(3), 52 Stat. 1062–1063. An employer who violated these provisions could be held civilly liable for backpay, liquidated damages, and attorney's fees. § 16, id., at 1069.

But the FLSA did not define "work" or "workweek," and this Court interpreted those terms broadly. It defined "work" as "physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer and his business." Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590, 598, 64 S.Ct. 698, 88 L.Ed. 949 (1944). Similarly, it defined "the statutory workweek" to "includ[e] all time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer's premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace." Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 690–691, 66 S.Ct. 1187, 90 L.Ed. 1515 (1946). Applying these expansive definitions, the Court found compensable the time spent traveling between mine portals and underground work areas, Tennessee Coal, supra, at 598, 64 S.Ct. 698, and the time spent walking from timeclocks to work benches, Anderson, supra, at 691–692, 66 S.Ct. 1187.

These decisions provoked a flood of litigation. In the six months following this Court's decision in Anderson, unions and employees filed more than 1,500 lawsuits under the FLSA. S.Rep. No. 37, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 2–3 (1947). These suits sought nearly $6 billion in back pay and liquidated damages for various preshift and postshift activities. Ibid .

Congress responded swiftly. It found that the FLSA had "been interpreted judicially in disregard of long-established customs, practices, and contracts between employers and employees, thereby creating wholly unexpected liabilities, immense in amount and retroactive in operation, upon employers." 29 U.S.C. § 251(a). Declaring the situation to be an "emergency," Congress found that, if such interpretations "were permitted to stand, ... the payment of such liabilities would bring about financial ruin of many employers" and "employees would receive windfall payments ... for activities performed by them without any expectation of reward beyond that included in their agreed rates of pay." §§ 251(a) - (b).

Congress met this emergency with the Portal–to–Portal Act. The Portal–to–Portal Act exempted employers from liability for future claims based on two categories of work-related activities as follows:

"(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) [which covers work compensable by contract or custom], no employer shall be subject to any liability or punishment under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, ... on account of the failure of such employer ... to pay an employee overtime compensation, for or on account of any of the following activities of such employee engaged in on or after the date of the enactment of this Act—

"(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities which such employee is employed to perform, and

"(2) activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities, "which occur either prior to the time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he ceases, such principal activity or activities." § 4, 61 Stat. 86–87 (codified at 29 U.S.C. § 254(a) ).

At issue here is the exemption for "activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities."

B

This Court has consistently interpreted "the term ‘principal activity or activities' [to] embrac[e] all activities which are an ‘integral and indispensable part of the principal activities.’ " IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21, 29–30, 126 S.Ct. 514, 163 L.Ed.2d 288 (2005) (quoting Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 252–253, 76 S.Ct. 330, 100 L.Ed. 267 (1956) ). Our prior opinions used those words in their ordinary sense. The word "integral" means "[b]elonging to or making up an integral whole; constituent, component; spec [ ifically] necessary to the completeness or integrity of the whole; forming an intrinsic portion or element, as distinguished from an adjunct or appendage." 5 Oxford English Dictionary 366 (1933) (OED); accord, Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20 (Brief for United States); see also Webster's New International Dictionary 1290 (2d ed. 1954) (Webster's Second) ("[e]ssential to completeness; constituent, as a part"). And, when used to describe a duty, "indispensable" means a duty "[t]hat cannot be dispensed with, remitted, set aside, disregarded, or neglected." 5 OED 219; accord, Brief for United States 19; see also Webster's Second 1267 ("[n]ot capable of being dispensed with, set aside, neglected, or pronounced nonobligatory"). An activity is therefore 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. As we describe below, this definition, as applied in these circumstances , is consistent with the Department of Labor's regulations.

Our precedents have identified several activities that satisfy this test. For example, we have held compensable the time battery-plant employees spent showering and changing clothes because the chemicals in the plant were "toxic...