Supreme-Court-seaslCo-authored by Kara Goodwin and Noah Finkel

Pending before the United States Supreme Court is a petition for writ of certiorari asking the Court to determine whether an employer may use payments for bona fide meal periods as an offset/credit against compensable work time. If the Supreme Court accepts the case, it would also provide an excellent opportunity for the Court to address repeat questions regarding the level of deference owed to statutory interpretations by agencies advanced for the first time in litigation and whether pay practices not expressly prohibited by the FLSA are permissible.

Case Background and Circuit Split

In Smiley v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Company, the plaintiffs filed an FLSA collective action seeking compensation for unpaid time spent donning and doffing uniforms and safety gear and performing other activities before and after shifts. This unpaid time averaged approximately 30 to 60 minutes per day. The plaintiffs worked 12-hour shifts and were paid for three 30-minute breaks per shift. The company counted the paid break time as hours worked for overtime purposes, even though the FLSA did not require it to do so, and included the payments in the calculation of the employees’ regular rate of pay. The paid break time always exceeded the amount of unpaid pre-shift and post-shift off-the-clock work (i.e., it was undisputed that the plaintiffs were paid for more hours than they actually worked—the employees had a total of 11 to 11.5 hours worked per day, including pre- and post-shift activities and excluding the paid break time, and were paid for 12 hours worked per day). The district court held that the employer could “completely offset the plaintiffs’ unpaid donning and doffing and shift relief activities with plaintiffs’ paid meal periods,” and granted summary judgment for the employer.

On appeal, the Third Circuit rejected the offset argument and overturned the dismissal. Giving deference to an amicus curiae brief submitted by the DOL, the Third Circuit held that the company’s pay practice violated the FLSA because “[n]othing in the FLSA authorizes the type of offsetting [the company] advances here.”  Although acknowledging that the FLSA is silent and does not “expressly prohibit offsetting,” the Third Circuit nonetheless determined that the company’s pay practice was contrary to the goals and broad remedial purpose of the FLSA.

The Third Circuit’s decision conflicts with decisions by the Seventh Circuit Barefield v. Village of Winnetka and the Eleventh Circuit in Avery v. City of Talladega, which both upheld the use of compensation paid for non-work time as a credit against overtime compensation owed for pre- and post-shift work time. More specifically, in Barefield, the employer required its employees to attend a 15-minute roll call before the scheduled start of their shifts but also paid employees for a 30-minute bona fide meal break each day. The Seventh Circuit held that “the meal periods are not compensable [hours worked] under the FLSA and [defendant] may properly offset the meal break against the compensable roll call time worked by plaintiffs.”

Similarly, in Avery, the Eleventh Circuit held that an offset/credit is appropriate when an employer pays for bona fide meal breaks under the FLSA: “If the meal break is not compensable time under the FLSA, then the [employer] should be allowed to offset the amount it pays for the meal break against any amount it owes the plaintiffs for pre- and post-shift time at work.” Thus, under the current state of the law, an employer who compensates employees for bona fide meal breaks (even though the FLSA does not require it) may properly offset that meal break against alleged off-the-clock work for an employee who works in Illinois or Florida, but the same pay practice, if used for an employee in New Jersey, would violate the FLSA. The Supreme Court has been asked to resolve this Circuit split to “restore uniformity to this important area of federal law.”

Other Important Questions To Be Resolved

The Supreme Court also has an opportunity to resolve an important question (and one causing division among courts of appeals and federal district courts) regarding the level of deference owed to statutory interpretations by agencies advanced for the first time in litigation, such as in amicus briefs. Here, the DOL’s amicus curiae briefs were its first statement on the offset pay practice at issue—the DOL has never promulgated a regulation prohibiting the use of compensation for non-work time included in the regular rate as an offset/credit; has not issued any opinion letters, published statements of policy, or guidance on this subject; has not taken any enforcement actions with respect to this issue; and before this case, has never submitted an amicus curiae brief on this issue. Nonetheless, and even though it did not find the statute at issue to be ambiguous, the Third Circuit accorded Skidmore deference to the DOL’s position that the employer’s pay practices ran afoul of the FLSA. Although the Supreme Court recently has criticized attempts by the DOL to offer guidance or positions not subject to notice and comment rulemaking or that reverse long-standing practice, the Supreme Court has not squarely addressed whether Skidmore deference is owed to an agency’s statutory interpretation expressed for the first time in litigation. The answer to this question is especially important given that amicus positions can flip-flop quickly with a change in administration and, as another appellate court has noted, “[t]he Secretary of Labor has been particularly aggressive in attempt[ing] to mold statutory interpretation and establish policy by filing ‘friend of the court’ briefs in private litigation.”

Finally, if the Supreme Court accepts this case, it would provide an opportunity to confirm that only practices Congress has prohibited in the FLSA can constitute violations of that Act. Put another way, if there is no express prohibition of a practice in the FLSA (i.e., the FLSA is silent concerning whether compensation paid for breaks that is included in the regular rate may be used as an offset/credit against compensable work time), the practice is permissible.