SCOTUS: Security Screening Not On The Clock

The Supreme Court has held that the time employees of an Amazon contractor had to stand in line waiting for a security check before they could go home – said to be as much as 25 minutes – was not compensable. The ruling was based on the characterization of the wait time as not “integral and indispensable” to the “principal activity” of the job. “With this elaboration on the definition of what is a compensable activity,” writes Dykema Gossett attorney Robert A. Boonin, “one can only hope that courts will be able to evaluate pre- and post-shift activity cases with more confidence and avoid the recent trend of conflicting holdings on this issue.” He notes this decision apparently does not extend to “doffing and donning,” however, and in a concurring opinion Justices Kagan and Justice Sotomayer specifically said as much.