Always amazing to see how things are decided by tiny reading of the English language. The law states…
Hours worked’ means the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so
The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employer control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.
By definition the supremes are correct, but the judges that ruled the other way are also very experienced judges.
Also important… Apple (probably accidentally) forfeited the "de minimis" argument which says employees don't have to be paid for small, incidental periods of time off the clock. I was expecting this case to be a declaration on reasonable "de minimis" requirements. Instead we got a sentence diagramming exercise.
> The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employee control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.
(1) I think you meant "time under employer control"?
(2) Are you suggesting the lower court just ignored the "is suffered" part?
2 - the lower court appears to have used the back half of the sentence as describing the components of the first half.
Given the supremes’ reading, the back half doesn’t need to even be there, though I guess if you can conceive of someone working for a company but not subject to the control of the company it would cover some ground. Heaven knows I’ve had employees like that.
2 - But if the circuit court used the back of the sentence to read the first half, time going through security screening would've seemed like a pretty obvious example of time that the employee "is suffered", right?
My understanding was that's not what happened though. See page 7 for the summary of the district court's reasoning.
Are you saying "is suffered" stands alone? What does that mean? I read it as "is suffered to work", meaning the employee is allowed to work, which in this case it sounds like it might not apply.
Yes. I understand to "be suffered" here means "to be made to go through something unpleasant/undesired/etc."... which is what a security check is. The point I take being that if you make employees "suffer", you can't use their inability to perform work during that time as an excuse not to pay them. (Note the word in between is "or", not "to".)
> "The employee is suffered" means someone/something is suffering the employee. The employee is hurting someone/something.
Huh, interesting. How does this make sense in context though? The text says "all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work" must be compensated, so you're saying the law says that an employee must get paid for all the time he spends doing either of {hurting someone/something, being permitted to work}? Why would there be a law to mandate paying employees that hurt people...?
So "is suffered" would actually just be a synonym for "is permitted" in this case. So essentially "is suffered" could be removed with no change in meaning, since "is permitted" is already in the law. As for why lawmakers decided to insert what appears to be a useless and confusing synonym, I'm not sure.
Atleast where I love, when you're not permitted to work you can sue the employer, since you have a right and obligation to fullfill your side of the contract just as the employer has a right and obligation to fullfill theirs. Not being able to work would be a contractual violation suffered by the employee.
This makes sense, but I don't understand how this relates to my comment unfortunately. If anything it would suggest my prior interpretation of "is suffered" was correct? At least I don't see how this translates into an employee hurting someone else.
Hours worked’ means the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so
The lower court read that as "hours worked is the time under employer control where the employee can work whether they do it or not". The supremes cut that into two statements at the ", and" and made "subject to the control of the employer" stand alone in addition to when they could be made to work.
By definition the supremes are correct, but the judges that ruled the other way are also very experienced judges.
Also important… Apple (probably accidentally) forfeited the "de minimis" argument which says employees don't have to be paid for small, incidental periods of time off the clock. I was expecting this case to be a declaration on reasonable "de minimis" requirements. Instead we got a sentence diagramming exercise.