Background
Lisa Johnson and Gale Miller Anderson worked as hourly warehouse employees for Amazon during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon required employees to undergo pre-shift COVID-19 screenings before clocking in, and the screenings took about 10 to 15 minutes. The plaintiffs brought a putative class action seeking overtime wages under section 4a(1) of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law for that unpaid time. The district court dismissed the Illinois claim after concluding that the federal Portal-to-Portal Act’s exclusion for preliminary activities applied. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit certified to the Illinois Supreme Court whether the Illinois statute incorporates that federal exclusion, and the Illinois Supreme Court answered no.
The court’s reasoning
After receiving the Illinois Supreme Court’s answer to the certified question, the Seventh Circuit held that the district court’s dismissal rested on an incorrect premise. The court explained that the text of section 4a(1) of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law and the Illinois Department of Labor regulations do not incorporate the federal Portal-to-Portal Act’s exclusion for preliminary activities. The court also rejected Amazon’s request to affirm on a different theory by importing a general federal benefit-of-the-employer test into the Illinois statute. It reasoned that the Illinois statute and regulations do not generally use that test, while the regulations mention it only in specific contexts such as meal periods, on-call time away from the premises, and some travel situations. The court concluded that it could not add that limitation to the statute where the Illinois legislature and agency had not done so.
What it means going forward
The plaintiffs’ Illinois overtime claim survives dismissal, and the case returns to the district court for further proceedings under the Illinois Minimum Wage Law without the federal preliminary-activity exclusion or a general benefit-of-the-employer limitation being read into the statute.