Quick Hits

• The Supreme Court of Maryland ruled that the FLSA’s de minimis doctrine applies to state wage laws.
• Employers in Maryland may be able to exclude brief, hard-to-measure work periods from compensable hours under state wage laws.

The De Minimis Doctrine Under the FLSA

The FLSA requires employers to pay employees for all hours worked; the FLSA, however, does not define “work.” The Supreme Court of the United States has sought to provide guidance, and, in the 1946 case of Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Company, it recognized the de minimis rule, which allowed employers to disregard small amounts of time that employees spend on work-related tasks when calculating their total hours worked. According to the Court, “Split-second absurdities are not justified by the actualities of working conditions or by the policy of the [FLSA]. It is only when an employee is required to give up a substantial measure of his time and effort that compensable working time is involved.” The U.S. Department of Labor subsequently issued regulations under the FLSA, which included the following provision, 29 C.F.R. § 785.47:

In recording working time under the Act, insubstantial or insignificant periods of time beyond the scheduled working hours, which cannot as a practical administrative matter be precisely recorded for payroll purposes, may be disregarded. The courts have held that such trifles are de minimis. (Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946)) This rule applies only where there are uncertain and indefinite periods of time involved of a few seconds or minutes duration, and where the failure to count such time is due to considerations justified by industrial realities. An employer may not arbitrarily fail to count as hours worked any part, however small, of the employee’s fixed or regular working time or practically ascertainable period of time he is regularly required to spend on duties assigned to him.

Background

The case of Martinez v. Amazon.com Services LLC revolves around a former packer in a warehouse. Warehouse employees were provided with lockers to store their personal belongings before entering the secured area of the warehouse floor. They also had the option of bringing their belongings into the work area, but if so, they were required to stand in line for enhanced security screening when exiting the floor.

After leaving employment with the company, the packer filed suit in federal court, seeking to represent a class of fellow employees with regard to claims under Maryland’s Wage Payment and Collection Law and Wage and Hour Law. The packer argued that the employees should have been compensated for the time spent waiting for and undergoing mandatory security screenings after clocking out—a varying period of several minutes per day.

Certification of the Question to the Maryland Supreme Court

A key question in the federal case was whether the de minimis doctrine applied to claims under Maryland’s wage laws—a question that had not previously been answered. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland certified that question to the Supreme Court of Maryland. Certification of a question occurs when a federal court seeks guidance from a state’s highest court on a point of state law that is pivotal to resolving a case. This process is used when there is no controlling precedent in the state’s appellate decisions, constitutional provisions, or statutes. The state court renders an opinion on the interpretation of state law, which the federal court then applies in addressing the merits of the case before it.

The Supreme Court of Maryland’s Holding

The Supreme Court of Maryland held that the de minimis doctrine does indeed apply to claims brought under Maryland’s Wage Payment and Collection Law and the Maryland Wage and Hour Law. Although the term is not present in the plain language of these laws, the court reasoned that the doctrine had been recognized under the FLSA at the time that the state enacted its wage laws, which were specifically modeled on the FLSA and “share the same purposes” as the FLSA. Thus, the court found that, when the General Assembly enacted these laws, “it intended also to incorporate the de minimis rule that was understood to apply to the FLSA following Anderson.”

In so holding, the court noted that “[l]ike the FLSA, the Maryland Wage Laws reflect a balance of competing interests”: ensuring that employers pay wages for an employee’s work hours, but not imposing liability for “‘split-second absurdities’ due to ‘the realities of the industrial world’ and the ‘actualities of working conditions.’” (Citing Anderson, internal quotations omitted.)

Implications for Maryland Employers

This ruling has significant implications for employers in Maryland. By affirming the applicability of the de minimis rule, the Supreme Court of Maryland has provided employers with a legal basis to exclude negligible periods of time from compensable work hours under state law, as well as the FLSA. This means that employers may not necessarily be required to pay employees for very brief periods of time spent on activities such as security screenings, provided these periods are truly minimal and difficult to measure accurately.