NOTICE: This opinion is subject to
formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the
Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States,
Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal
errors, in order that corrections may be made before the
preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 13–433
_________________
INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC., PETITIONER
v. JESSE BUSK et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[December 9, 2014]
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the
Court.
The employer in this case required its
employees, warehouse workers who retrieved inventory and packaged
itfor shipment, to undergo an antitheft security screen-ing 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. ___
(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),
52Stat. 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 (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 –691 (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, and the time spent walking from timeclocks to
work benches, Anderson, supra, at 691–692.
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., pp. 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
FLSAhad “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 ac-tual place of performance of the principal activity or
ac-tivities 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,
61Stat. 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 –30
(2005) (quoting Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U. S.
247 –253 (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 to human beings” and the employer conceded that
“the clothes-changing and showering activities of the
employees [were] indispensable to the performance of their
productive work and integrally related thereto.”
Steiner, supra, at 249, 251. And we have held
compensable the time meatpacker employees spent sharpening their
knives because dull knives would “slow down production”
on the assembly line, “affect the appearance of the meat as
well as the quality of the hides,” “cause waste,”
and lead to “accidents.” Mitchell v. King
Packing Co., 350 U. S. 260, 262 (1956) . By contrast, we
have held noncompensable the time poultry-plant employees spent
waiting to don protective gear because such waiting was “two
steps removed from the productive activity on the assembly
line.” IBP, supra, at 42.
The Department of Labor’s regulations are
consistent with this approach. See 29 CFR §790.8(b) (2013)
(“The term ‘principal activities’ includes all
activities which are an integral part of a principal
activity”); §790.8(c) (“Among the activities
included as an integral part of a principal activity are those
closely related activities which are indispensable to its
performance”). As an illustration, those regulations explain
that the time spent by an employee in a chemical plant changing
clothes would be compensable if he “c[ould not] perform his
principal activities without putting on certain clothes” but
would not be compensable if “changing clothes [were] merely a
convenience to the employee and not directly related to his
principal activities.” See §790.8(c). As the regulations
explain, “when performed under the conditions normally
present,” activities including “checking in and out and
waiting in line to do so, changing clothes, washing up or
showering, and waiting in line to receive pay checks” are
“ ‘preliminary’ ” or
“ ‘postliminary’ ” activities.
§790.7(g).
III
A
The security screenings at issue here are
noncompensable postliminary activities. To begin with, the
screenings were not the “principal activity or activities
which [the] employee is employed to perform.” 29
U. S. C. §254(a)(1). Integrity Staffing did not
employ its workers to undergo security screenings, but to retrieve
products from warehouse shelves and package those products for
shipment to Amazon customers.
The security screenings also were not
“integral and indispensable” to the employees’
duties as warehouse workers. As explained above, an activity is not
integral and indispensable to an employee’s principal
activities unless it is an intrinsic element of those activities
and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform
those activities. 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 Solicitor General, adopting the position of
the Department of Labor, agrees that these screenings were
noncompensable postliminary activities. See Brief for United States
10. That view is fully consistent with an Opinion Letter the
Department issued in 1951. The letter found noncompensable a
preshift security search of employees in a rocket-powder plant
“ ‘for matches, spark producing devices such as
cigarette lighters, and other items which have a direct bearing on
the safety of the employees,’ ” as well as a
postshift security search of the employees done
“ ‘for the purpose of preventing
theft.’ ” Opinion Letter from Dept. of Labor, Wage
and Hour Div., to Dept. of Army, Office of Chief of Ordnance (Apr.
18, 1951), pp. 1–2 (available in Clerk of Court’s case
file). The Department drew no distinction between the searches
conducted for the safety of the employees and those conducted for
the purpose of preventing theft—neither were compensable
under the Portal-to-Portal Act.
B
The Court of Appeals erred by focusing on
whether an employer required a particular activity. The
integral and indispensable test is tied to the productive work that
the employee is employed to perform. See, e.g., IBP,
546 U. S., at 42; Mitchell, supra, at 262;
Steiner, 350 U. S., at 249–251; see also 29 CFR
§790.8(a) (explaining that the term “principal
activities” was “considered sufficiently broad to
embrace within its terms such activities as are indispensable to
the performance of productive work” (internal
quotation marks omitted; emphasis added)); §790.8(c)
(“Among the activities included as an integral part of a
principal activity are those closely related activities which are
indispensable to its performance” (emphasis
added)).
If the test could be satisfied merely by the
fact that an employer required an activity, it would sweep into
“principal activities” the very activities that the
Portal-to-Portal Act was designed to address. The employer in
Anderson, for instance, required its employees to walk
“from a timeclock near the factory gate to a
workstation” so that they could “begin their
work,” “but it is indisputable that the
Portal-to-Portal Act evinces Congress’ intent to repudiate
Anderson’s holding that such walking time was
compensable under the FLSA.” IBP, supra, at 41.
A test that turns on whether the activity is for the benefit of the
employer is similarly overbroad.
Finally, we reject the employees’ argument
that time spent waiting to undergo the security screenings is
compensable under the FLSA because Integrity Staffing could have
reduced that time to a de minimis amount. The fact that an
employer could conceivably reduce the time spent by employees on
any preliminary or postliminary activity does not change the nature
of the activity or its relationship to the principal activities
that an employee is employed to perform. These arguments are
properly presented to the employer at the bargaining table, see 29
U. S. C. §254(b)(1), not to a court in an FLSA
claim.
* * *
We hold that an activity is integral and
indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is
employed to perform—and thus compensable under the
FLSA—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. Because the employees’ time spent
waiting to undergo and undergoing Integrity Staffing’s
security screenings does not meet these criteria, we reverse the
judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 13–433
_________________
INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC., PETITIONER
v. JESSE BUSK et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[December 9, 2014]
Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan
joins, concurring.
I concur in the Court’s opinion, and write
separately only to explain my understanding of the standards the
Court applies.
The Court reaches two critical conclusions.
First, the Court confirms that compensable
“ ‘principal’ ” activities
“ ‘includ[e] . . . those closely related
activities which are indispensable to [a principal
activity’s] performance,’ ” ante, at
6 (quoting 29 CFR §790.8(c)(2013)), and holds that the
required security screenings here were not “integral and
indispensable” to another principal activity the employees
were employed to perform, ante, at 7. I agree. As both
Department of Labor regulations and our precedent make clear, an
activity is “indispensable” to another, principal
activity only when an employee could not dispense with it without
impairing his ability to perform the principal activity safely and
effectively. Thus, although a battery plant worker might, for
example, perform his principal activities without donning proper
protective gear, he could not do so safely, see Steiner v.
Mitchell, 350 U. S. 247 –253 (1956); likewise, a
butcher might be able to cut meat without having sharpened his
knives, but he could not do so effectively, see Mitchell v.
King Packing Co., 350 U. S. 260 –263 (1956); accord,
29 CFR §790.8(c). Here, by contrast, the security screenings
were not “integral and indispensable” to the
employees’ other principal activities in this sense. The
screenings may, as the Ninth Circuit observed below, have been in
some way related to the work that the employees performed in the
warehouse, see 713 F. 3d 525, 531 (2013), but the employees could
skip the screenings altogether without the safety or effectiveness
of their principal activities being substantially impaired, see
ante, at 7.
Second, the Court holds also that the screenings
were not themselves “ ‘principal . . .
activities’ ” the employees were
“ ‘employed to perform.’ ”
Ibid. (quoting 29 U. S. C. §254(a)(1)). On this point,
I understand the Court’s analysis to turn on its conclusion
that undergoing security screenings was not itself work of
consequence that the employees performed for their employer. See
ante, at 7. Again, I agree. As the statute’s use of
the words “preliminary” and “postliminary”
suggests, §254(a)(2), and as our precedents make clear, the
Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 is primarily concerned with defining
the beginning and end of the workday. See IBP, Inc. v.
Alvarez, 546 U. S. 21 ,34–37 (2005). It distinguishes
between activities that are essentially part of the ingress and
egress process, on the one hand, and activities that constitute the
actual “work of consequence performed for an employer,”
on the other hand. 29 CFR §790.8(a); see also ibid.
(clarifying that a principal activity need not predominate over
other activities, and that an employee could be employed to perform
multiple principal activities). The security screenings at issue
here fall on the “preliminary . . . or postliminary”
side of this line. 29 U. S. C. §254(a)(2). The
searches were part of the process by which the employees egressed
their place of work, akin to checking in and out and waiting in
line to do so—activities that Congress clearly deemed to be
preliminary or postlimininary. See S. Rep. No. 48, 80th Cong., 1st
Sess., 47 (1947); 29 CFR §790.7(g). Indeed, as the Court
observes, the Department of Labor reached the very same conclusion
regarding similar security screenings shortly after the
Portal-to-Portal Act was adopted, see ante, at 7–8,
and we owe deference to that determination, see Christensen
v. Harris County, 529 U. S. 576, 587 (2000) .
Because I understand the Court’s opinion
to be consistent with the foregoing, I join it.
