Missouri Supreme Court Reverses Overtime Wages Judgment Resulting From Employer-Mandated Screenings Under The Portal-to-Portal Act

• Published date: 11 August 2021
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Employee Benefits & Compensation, Employment Litigation/ Tribunals, Class Actions
• Law Firm: Lewis Rice
• Author: Mr Neal F. Perryman and Joy D. McMillen

On June 1, 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court issued a decision reversing a $113 million class action verdict in favor of Missouri state correctional officers for the state's alleged failure to properly pay them for all pre-shift and post-shift activities in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA").¹ The jury award was rendered after the trial court had granted partial summary judgment to the correctional officers upon finding that the state's department of corrections was liable for all pre-shift and post-shift activities under the terms of labor agreements that required compliance with the FLSA.

Of particular interest to private Missouri employers is the Court's analysis as to whether time spent by the correctional officers in undergoing mandatory security screenings at the beginning and end of their shifts was compensable time under the FLSA. In reversing the trial court's summary judgment in favor of the correctional officers, the Missouri Supreme Court examined the summary judgment record in a rather academic fashion to conclude that it did not establish sufficient facts to show that the correctional officers' submission to security screenings was integral and indispensable to the performance of their work. In doing so, the Court specifically rejected a recent decision of the federal court of appeals in the Tenth Circuit² that held that "submitting to a correctional facility's security procedures was integral and indispensable to the officers' principal activities of maintaining custody and discipline of inmates and providing security, in part, because the screenings and the principal activities shared the same goals of providing prison security."

In rejecting what it characterized as the Tenth Circuit's "subtle expansion" of the test formulated by the United States Supreme Court in 2014 for determining whether a pre- or post-shift activity is integral and indispensable to an employee's principal activities of work such that the time spent in performing such activity must be compensated, the Missouri Supreme Court expressed concern that such an expansion would "likely result in the very issue the Portal-to-Portal Act was passed to address." In rejecting such an expansion and declining to follow the Tenth Circuit's ruling, the Missouri Supreme Court noted that Congress enacted the Portal-to-Portal Act specifically to limit the United States Supreme Court's rather broad definition of compensable work under the FLSA to include "nearly every...