we're argument first this morning case thirteen for thirty three integrity staffing solutions versus boss mr clement mr chief justice and may please the court going through security as part of the process is a classic post luminar a suppose that there is an employee year with cash registers and there is a very extensive process for closing out the cash registers and that extensive process is to protect against theft if it weren't for that concerned you could close out a cash register much more quickly or the same for bank tellers or the same for casino dealers you know that there is like a twenty minute process which is essentially an anti theft security process and it happens at the end of the shift when the cashier goes off duty what's the difference between that case and going through security  it at amazon well i think one difference is not i'm not crystal clear that that time would not be non compensable because i think that's sort of the winding down period which is i think with the least potentially within the a every activity if you don't know by the way i mean before you get on to that you know how that's treated under the law because i guess my assumption was that this kind of period would be treated as compensable i but if that's not right let me know well it's a problem of hypotheticals because i don't know that that particular case is a reason i would think that would be actually a close question under the act because you do have this notion under the portal portal act that political activities and post luminary activities  that if you go back to mt clemens which used the term preliminary that included the sort of wind up process and might well include this sort of wind down process at the workstation couldn't you say that closing down the cash register is part of the could get in yourself inspected as you leave as you leave the the place of business is not part of the job you could only case where is your part of the job you could definitely say that justice we and i meant to get that is  thing i don't think it's the same i think it's an arguable case under the act that it still might be post women marry but i think if you look at the cases that are out there the courts have struggled a bit with the policeman area and post luminary activities to take place at the workstation where i don't think they've struggled until the ninth circuit decision here is when you're talking about time after you've left the primary workstation what would you have it would cost is it going to the doors that would seem to me to depend on a complete for two a day you know if i if i have the cashier from with her tray to the manager station and do the same thing there on the way out the door there would be one answer and if she doesn't at the cashier station it would be another answer easier case than your hypothetical is the exit screenings are a logical part of the process the other side in this case tries to raise the specter of lawn mowing being uncompensated and car washing being uncompensated but no employer and because of this if get out at the same time what could be a five minute process turns out to be twenty five minutes twenty five minutes of the workers time and those allegedly would not occur if the employer had provide sufficient standing justice ginsburg alternately we don't think that allegation is relevant here now it is the second reason why i think this waiting time at the exit would be particularly a bad candidate for treating as compensable just because it was relatively long is because it's not uniform twenty five minutes and so it's directly an time that was people had to wait go in and punch the clock at the pottery factory in mount clemens and even them out clemens court didn't treat the waiting time to punch in as compensable i think part of the reason was that it didn't really make any sense it took it took eight minutes for everybody to get through but that would create all sorts of anomalies where the first person who got through would get treated it would get paid for eight more minutes than the last person that got through but that's true i'm sorry  that's true of a work day generally some people have to close down the shop the other down so it takes the people who are closing down the shop longer i'm not worried about what if they stop there though i think that's not really true of the principal activity you still have to define what a principal activity is and so i think this is the principal activity work that benefits the employer in some way just sort of my own i think it's important that two concepts separate one is work under the fair labor standards act and for purposes of that all you really do need is things that are required by the employer for the employer's benefit that require a minimum amount of exertion that's the test from this court's cases but principal activities is a separate and more demanding task under the portal portal act and the way i think about the statute is  why isn't the long line in caused by very few checkers for the benefit of the employer it's for the benefit of the employer to hire fewer checkers it might be for the benefit of the employer in that sort of circumstances justice kennedy but that doesn't make it not post limited activity and not compensable and if you look at the universe of all the non compensable time under the portal portal act i think in every instance you could say if the employer only did more he could reduce your she it could reduce that time and so if you go back to his plan for example to be closer to the city where the employer right so it takes a minority get to work its fault on that it really takes him an hour instead of just ten minutes he should move his play it is just a matter of cost right that's exactly right justice scalia and you can take it from the commuting time to the commuting time internally if you go back to those trams in the in the coalmining cases if the employer added more trams or more tram because the fact that it is for the employer's benefit is part of what makes it compensable work presumptively or work under the fair labor standards act but when you get to applying the portal to portal act that is activity that even though it's work even though it's requires you to put on a particular protect outfit that you can't do the work without we've said that's compensable i don't think you have a suit and put donning generally isn't so i'm not quite sure how you can take out that elements from this analysis just to sort of i don't think there's a case of this court that says just because the employer require something that would otherwise be super superfluous that it therefore becomes integral and indispensable and so i would actually take i agree with you it can't be superfluous it can't be something that's with for the benefit of the employee putting on clothes to keep yourself from being splattered with non certain color smock or a certain piece of equipment that's not actually particularly integral in indispensable to anything i don't think anything in this court's cases would say just because the employer required it it is therefore compensable and i think if you go back to the quintessential example of something that is post luminary a non compensable the time clocks the checking out process all of that is required by the employer and for the employers benefit and so i don't think you can meaningfully distinguish the exit an indispensable meaningless is and what i what i would say can't literally mean indispensable can it because then anything at the end of the day there probably five ways of doing it cash registers you could sway that way  area it doesn't come outside of that exception and become a principle activity and i think two points make it one is you know i think the next sharpening in king packing for example really is indispensable you can't run a butchering operation without sharp knives i think you can perfectly well run a warehouse facility without egress security so i think actually amazon i don't think can i mean what makes amazon amazon it's a system of inventory control that betters everybody else in the business and what's really important amazon is that it know where every toothbrushes in the warehouse is and that's just as integral to what amazon does and to what it requires its employees to do as for example the yeah i'm going back to my hypos but the person who closes out the cash register or the person who closes out the bank teller operation is that this is sort of a necessary part of what of what  the folks who do all the stock and and shelving and shelving and do it amazon well i guess i would beg to differ justice kagan i think certainly ever thing in the amazon facility is bar coded in the like and everybody knows where everything is but there's always the possibility that somebody would not barcode an incoming item at all and put it in their pocket now if they're doing that they're not discharging their principal activities and if they're detected on the way out i mean that might help keep the next person on mission but that doesn't make it integral and indispensable to discharging the primary job duty i suppose it is also necessary to amazones business that it know how many hours each of his workers whose work who knows how much to pay them scalia and i do think that the exit security screenings are just the modern and modern analogue of that not only do they both come at the employer's insistence and for the employer's benefit but they also have this process of verifying that the employers are sensually behaving in an honest and way it's the same way it's trying to ensure that an employee is not lying about having worked an eight hour day you use the time clocks to verify that you also use the exit screen for that process and the other aspect of it that makes it so closely analogous is they are a logical part of the process they are part of getting you from your principal work station to the exit doors at the end of the day classically post luminary activity if that's not if the court compensated employees from portal to portal and that's basically the regime that this court created in a series of cases culminating in mt clements pottery but it's just it's clear the congress reversed that result in the poor old portal act if i can reserve the balance of my time thank you mr gannon mr chief justice and may it please the court the portal to portal act generally accepted for mandatory compensation the activities that are associated with a process by which employees arrive on the employer's premises at the entrance to the portal and get to the place where they perform their principal work activities at the beginning of the day and then the process by which they leave at the end of the day to get to the exits we think this a curate screenings here are non compensable because they are post luminary activities and they are not integral and indispensable to the that i think you're referring to footnote eighteen of our brief there are skins bergen there we talk about the fact that the employer can't just require lots of other things to be done at the end of the day and call those things post luminary i don't think that we have any particular examples of searches in mind there aren't cases that deal with compensable searches but i think the question there would be whether the activity has so fundamentally changed the nature of what's going on that it no longer resembles the ordinary process of checking out the re can't think of anything ample and then where i think and i think the community can it would be well i think it would probably have to be a type of search that is so dramatically different more intrusive more time consuming the search itself not just the time waiting in line that it's fundamentally transform the nature of the activity so i think to the extent that some of the examples there suggest in the in the briefs like drug testing you could get you could analogize that in some way to an anti theft search one of the hypotheticals has to do with a person who works in a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility have they taken the pharmaceuticals the employer may want to test them on the way out and i'd say that that drug testing is not the type of thing that is normally associated with entering and leaving the property it's not the ordinary course of checking in and checking out waiting in line to do so the types of things that the labor department is thinking about in one thousand nine hundred seven when it adopted the interpretive regulation  that gave those examples and i also think that drug testing is not the sort of thing that's classically associated with the entrances in the exits it's the sort of thing that is usually done somewhere else and that's different from security and safety screenings the most of which i understand respondents concede are not actually going to be compensable and so we think that those are the the two reasons why in this case this looks like something that is both post luminary good happens as part of the process of getting out it is it happens at the door at the portal or near there and it is not integral in indispensable it is different from the activities that were issued at issue in steiner or in king packing or in i b p because the employees when they're on the work floor doing their job surely they do have access to merchandise it is of course important to amazon as you pointed out justice kagan that they not take the merchandise amazon and integrity staffing want to know where the merchandise is has to be more precise about it i think that canonically most of the activities are going to be associated with the process of getting in and out those where the those were the things that were at issue in the portal portal act cases that congress was effectively reversing when it adopted the port act and i think it's the continuous work day rule that's going to make it it makes sure that it happens only at the beginning in the end of the day i think that to be more precise about it though the way the statute is phrased it talks about these being activities that occur before the principle work activities begin at the end of the day or after they cease something isn't preliminary if you've already start doing your principal activities and it's not post luminary if you haven't already sees them and so the question is whether this is itself a principle activity by virtue of being integral in indispensable and can we write this case with discussing whether or not this is for the benefit of the employer or do we have to address that what i think that it's always going to be for the benefit of the employer if it comes up in the context of the portal to portal act because we wouldn't be concerned about whether the reception so you're saying that that is really not at all helpful or necessary for the analysis i don't think it is because that's the antecedent question about whether it would have been compensable under the f l s say if it doesn't benefit the employer of it's not required by the employer it wouldn't have been work you don't need to decide whether it's preliminary and post luminary and therefore accept it from the mandatory requirement so you can it so we assume that it's for the benefit of that yes i think that it almost certainly is always going to be for the benefit of the employer just like time clocks are just like you could say the requirement in tennessee call in july ning the mine cases that employees were required to ride from the face at from the portal of the mine down to the face where they are going to be working they were required to ride in the or skiff in the or skip and and presumably that benefited the employer for all sorts of reasons they didn't have to make more room for people to walk they didn't have to worry about employees getting injured by scripts that were going by and that's not enough to give you a different type no which is similar to some of the ones that have been floating around in the brief but it's actually based on on real life circumstances so there was a judge ages ago in the southern district of new york who had his clerks all that they did would you know help him with his opinions in these cases and that was their bed with i take the point that that that would be compensable and i think there we're talking about a kind of activity that isn't preliminary or post luminary we do think that those words have independent meaning as are the question i have for your side as this  make these facts and summary judgment i don't know if they want to introduce something else i mean in my own mind i can think of five things i'd like to know about the activity and about other activities and you know is it more like the cash register is it more like this or that so don't shouldn't we send it back so that if they want to develop the record for they can i think as the facts are alleged here we know when enough to know that these activities are no matter what i mean suppose it turns out the house thing you go over the country and this kind of warehouse employee integral it begins to look like part of the job to put the books back on the shelf yes i put the books back on the shelf to get a security job putting books back on the shelf closing out the cash register taking the cash to the supervisor all of those those things we think are compensable those to i mean the employer has set up a procedure in order to manage the cash the cash has to be taken somewhere at the end of the day when you're doing all of that much more quickly and much more easily if the employer were not wearing it about the employee pocketing some of that you know i mean you could just put it in bad versus going through this very very careful so an inventory control i don't think the purpose is enough to distinguish and i discussed at the end of our brief about how there are safety and security searches that the purposes overlap a lot here whether the employer is trying to protect its time when it requires somebody to do the tough punching in and punching out or protect its property i think the purpose is very difficult to make that the distinguishing factor but there we think that those activities are still what the employer is paying you to do they're not who went when you were done with the cash or when you've turned in the cash and then you're done you've ceased your principal activities for the day now you need to walk out the door in of it the door they want to look in your purse we think that that doesn't transform the time it took you from being done with your job to getting off the property into being compensable any more than it would with a dawning and doffing cases once you had finished taking off the garb you were done and then if you still had to walk you weren't getting paid and i b p this court held that when you were waiting in line to put on the equipment in the morning if the employer decides that they're just a nervous nellie and they want you to be wearing all sorts of extra security equipment that nobody really thinks of me is important but the employer demands that you do and they think it benefits them then you're going to have to get paid for the time it takes to put that on but not the time to do your waiting in line to do so thank you coun that work because it's an activity required for the benefit of the employer having said its work the question then becomes is it a principal activity not whether it is in a role and indispensable but is that a principal activity because we never get into an indispensable we never get post luminary a preliminary if it is a stand alone or a principal activity and to answer that question before you get to that to understand the structure of your argument if we were to disagree with you on the question of whether it's a principal there to test this out have you abandon that argument though i think we basically put the argument in a different place where your brief to i find your argument on into now on into growing indispensable we adopt the same test as they sort of we just say also integral indispensable no a principal activity is something that the employer tells you to do for the benefit of the employer that's not carved out by one of the exceptions exceptions been traveling to two hundred fifty for a one checking in checking somebody to go through employee screening he hires them to do something else and then the employee screening is certainly not principle but no one could hire the clerks of this court to wear mourning jackets yet it is a requirement of the job would they be  are they required to do it yes if they were required to do it on site that is you but we cry the change on sight by the regulations that must be compensable you could have waiters wear uniforms if you require that i think you hire them to to wear we're ousmane that isn't what they are hired for policemen are hired to look like policemen and act like policeman and people who are good for the solicitor general are hired to do speak like lawyers of of their job if you look at the task they're performing or do you look at their overall function their overall function is to move merchandise without losing it if they don't if they ship to the wrong address if they drop it in the wrong been that can't be received by the but it's not their next day they look for that particular item in that particular bin then they haven't done their job and if they still dealing that's a same thing i guess i don't understand principle means you're saying everything that is related somehow to the mean it may be part of that that you go through security at the end of the day but that doesn't make it a principle activity it the term principle doesn't mean it's it's overwhelmingly important it means it's one of your job tasks and just like making the grapefruit and i don't know why you don't see activities by the principal activities the statute uses the word principal activity well i know you say it because you want to fit under the statute but i'm saying i don't understand that it seems to me t you're just saying anything that is required for the benefit of the employer we are saying that it to anything is required a person is hired to do what they're told to do if eight if that's your job to start whether it exists in some kind of abstract job function or abstract flowchart if the worker isn't sitting there deciding well gee is this a principle workers are told you've got to check out that it's something they're told that they have to do that's right under your theory that would be a principal activity no they are workers it's all they have to return their tools which they have to pay for they have to punch out which is a check out and then after that and twenty minutes after that they have to be searched so the idea that this is just a part of checking out is wrong the fact actually in this case it is also wrong that when you for example roll calls roll calls for r r r eight checking in function but yet because there is more to it than just checking in it's compensable whereas just saying hi compensable it's not just as the employer does not hire somebody to check in i mean that's not the job i want to implore you to check it of course not so also an employer does not hire somebody in order to be inspected when it leaves its i don't see how you can call it a principle activity if the employer gets money indispensable to to taking care of the material in the warehouse it's into spent simple to it's important to the employer and he requires it just as he requires punching in and punching you but that doesn't make it part of  job it's indispensable to keep a job if you don't go through the other true but so is punching in and punching out and there is this carve out for checking in and checking out which we acknowledge it's it is a it  is a separate discrete function and it is a it is not a work of consequence which is actually the second part of the definition under there and he had waited to look at this is that the reason why checking in and checking out is not compensable is because it does have to do with this going in and going out you know it's all about ingress and egress and that's what the portal to portal at was about and if i make you go through a security gate as part of getting out of a factory it just becomes part of this you know the print that the principal design of the portal to portal at was about going in and going out and this is part of that but i can have an assembly line where you start at one end at the end of the assembly line you're done for the and so the question becomes if you go indispensable and they have gloss on that and so forth ok so i'm in the situation probably i'd say go with the labor department they're the ones who are in charge of this and they're saying you on it it's not an interpretation of the regulations i think what happened is the bundle i mean they're telling us now telling us now but i think it's bungled and it's and the question is do we bundle this process or do we unbundle it we say just like the cashier by the way we represent a lot of employees to sue casinos for the fact that they punch out go downstairs count their bank and then tally out takes fifteen to twenty minutes and then they're then they go out the special door for casino employees and  act this is not a wait they punch out first they don't punch out at the end they don't punch out during they punch out the checking and checking out functions completely finished they handed their tools they handed which to pay for because that the department labor says you have to be paid for and the regulations don't none of the briefs talk about the seven seven eighty five series of regulations which the fine work and the seven eighty five series t versus a way out you're leaving so the continuous work day works in favor of the employee and this time the continuous work day starts at the dawning part it ends at the docking part and then the starter case and doctor the wait to doff was covered because it was quite the continuous work that it's so it's the it's the mirror image of one coming it we're not saying they should get paid for waiting on line to come in we're saying they should pay waiting on line to be searched they're really checked that it's to be searched and drug tested this compensable when they send you to a physical to get drug tested or physical to do a job that's all of this is subject to collective bargaining in other words you're sitting down you say we want to be fifteen dollars an hour and you're asking for a dollar raise and you say look one reason we should get it is because we have to wait a half hour to get out or whatever and that's  whether it's compensable time or not that can certainly be a factor that goes into the collective bargaining the only comes out because it's after the fact after it's all taken place you go back and say we should get one of these double damages or damages or discretionary that liquidated arguments but going forward they can always say oh we're not going to the courts is we're not going to get compensated for this time so we're going to insist on a higher amount of the hourly wage for the eight hours that we do  these are not an employer all but a lot of the employees covered by this are union employees right actually they're the petitioner makes a big deal about this avalanche of things happening but so far out of the seven thousand or so fellas they were lawsuits that are filed every every year there are only five or six defendants who have ever been hit with this and why it's ten years and no they're mostly nonunion companies and you're talking about three  and cloture changing as separate exception but and in fact the reg on that says if it was required by law or the employer and it's not covered by the union contract then it is  requirement that the employer tell you to do it that i think is the linchpin to make something a principal activity if the employer didn't have a mandate if the employer says justice scalia well i don't really care how you get here but you better show up at eight o'clock you can get here at seven thirty you get here at seven forty five you take the risk you're going to be late that's a different story that's a different standard that's dinner going in the spencer what if the employer says i have to take particular rolled back a part of tennessee coal which was the travel time but the men they roll back now clemens they only rolled back a portion of it they met the roll back the going from the portal to your work station part of it they didn't roll back day starts when the first command comes down here is that the last command is to is to be searched and it doesn't take two minutes it takes twenty minutes because they don't want to open up more things they could use cameras they could use they could use a tally they could make people stand by the bench at the end of the day and they go through every bit certainly that would be compensable it's the fact is they chose this method it's the employers choice to do it because it's the cheapest method to do it to discourage employee theft and if the end if the merchandise isn't there at the at the end of the day or the beginning of the next shift you can't do your job so in that sense it isn't dispensable  travel commuting type travel it's work because you're told to do it and it's not an employee's position to say gee i don't think this is rocco i don't think this is compensable they used the example of sneaking out the back door we don't want employees to be going i well i don't i'm not going to pay for this and sneak out the back door now when it's a non mandated employ ert non mandated tast then we have a whole set of different rules indispensable then we say is it necessary is it indispensable what's he doing it be for his own convenience or was he doing it for the employers because he couldn't do the job without it if we have a situation where where we're told to do it and he doesn't he's fired i think that's that's that's ipso facto indispensable to his job whether it makes sense or not from the employer's point of view i mean ploy is that people make people do all kinds of things that don't make sense jobs that are our principal activities and if the if the definition of of a principal activity requires it to be related to something else and i think you may have misspoke there aren't stand alon a stand alone jobs that are not principle active i'm sorry i did it backwards there are there are jobs that are not standalone that are portions of the day that are principle activities to grapefruit would be one you know make great food all day long for the judge there are so that the concept that it has to be a job in of itself that you can have somebody else to do it is wrong the changing the gauge the way if you look at me if you look at the legislative history and you look at the regulations there are two scenarios that the senator cooper says explains everything the first one is waiting is you got to come in and oil your machine before you can do your job that's integral in the sponsible but the second one is laying out work for other people don't even know what that particular person's job is for all we know they could be the coffee maker or the or the or the go for whatever but they have eight task that was been assigned by their employer that they must be paid for doing the laying out the work of other people that's not in a role in the spencer will to their job but it's a specific task it's a principal activity and that's and that's what i think legislation contemplates those are all things that somebody might pay somebody to do individually so if the law clerk didn't prepare the grapefruit judge might hire somebody else to come in and prepare the ground for this is different isn't it because nobody would would pay anybody just to come in and go through a security and you know and nobody would pay anyone to have their they're changing into a uniform to be a waiter but if you require that changing on site it's compensable no i'm saying is that the examples you gave  are quite different because those are like mowing the lawn things like that those are things you would pay somebody he didn't have this employee do it you could you might hire somebody else to do it the the problem is waiting to receive instructions ok that is clearly engaged to wait you're waiting to receive instructions if you aren't going to do anything with those instructions that's not a job you don't set someone who's a professional instruction receiving person that's not a job yet it's a principle activity your engaged to wait and it doesn't matter whether you're engaged to wait because the employer wants and they're on the ready for something to happen or the employer just says you know i feel like having the factory full on tuesday maybe whatever the employer wants to do it's i mean i understand that but it's that enables you to do the thing that the employer is paying you for but if you're different from the examples that you gaff it is if you're out if  it does in fact lead to that but there are employers who say you know they're o c d they want everyone there till eight o'clock even if you have nothing to do and pain if to stay till eight o'clock you stayed eight o'clock there's nothing that's coming out of that but yet you are told to stay so you stay and there's no there's no function to it i mean employers do things like that or they do it for reasons that we don't know where we want to understand and we don't care because that's our system and they are allowed to run their business their way and a corollary of that is to take people what to do and you know the rule in the union shop is a bane grief you don't like it do it and then grieve it later same thing here it doesn't make sense what we're doing but we're going to do it and that's it and you know maybe it's a slow day and he just wants to make make his employer wants to keep the people busy whatever it is if the employer tells you to do it it's and it's not within these carve outs it it is day for ten minutes exactly it gets close but three minutes i think it's trivial but we're not talking trivial here we're talking twenty twenty five minutes and it's twenty five twenty five minutes not necessary to be done if they didn't have the screening if they didn't have that that type of screening you know you take off your clothes you take off your shoes you put your jacket down you empty your pockets and then the metal detector goes off anyway and they take you aside in they do another screening that's not to minimize that's a whole long process you go through the airport we know it funny thing is you ask that about the we do this on the way into an airport nobody screens on the way out of an airport i don't think the government very often screens people on the way out of a building it could be an exception i know but there but generally speaking people are screened on the way in and that's because it's not for the benefit of the employer it's for the benefit the public for the this is not a security check this is not skimming go patting down for weapons or taking out nuclear secrets or anything like that this is want this is only a theft deterrent mechanism in fact one could argue that the thing that the search itself whether they find anything or not has an effect on every other employee who knows it's happening it's all over the rule be suppose there were a special section about clothing for those that didn't exist and suppose you had to change into a uniform would that be compensable or on well the way that the way the history is the way the the history is that says if it's necessary for the job and then they distinguish between change on site and changing offsite so we're not talking a protective clothing we're talking about decorative clothing ok and the argument is changing once in the morning when you go to work that you do on your own time if the employer says i want you to wear a blue shirt instead of a pink shirt or a yellow and the locker room at work is just for the convenience of the officers it's not compensable but if they have to change on site for whatever reason clean rooms they have to change on site because they need those uniforms to be pressed in one of our cases this isn't really different from that's right it's not different from that because they're telling you you have to go on site and and it's no it's the same kind of burden that you might have to have protective clothes or some kind of special thing that you change into on site right they  the employer requires it for the employer's convenience and it doesn't fall in the travel exception it's not checking in and checking out as i said the checking in checking out first of all is a very very minor tad what's the example that you found th closest to this that favors you testing drug testing drug test because drug testing you can do on the way out or you can do it on the web on the way in and if they want to test you on the way out because they want you to  go i mean there are ways of defeating drug tests by taking out the chemicals so they squirt you to the to the bathroom they make somebody sit there and watch you while you were you give them a sample and then they go test it and they won't let you leave until you're done and it says drug testing this compensable physical exams for truck drivers and other types of people are compensable fueling the truck at when you're done with your trip is  the other end of it most of the cases everyone is talking about a policeman ari to work we're talking post women arie if we're principal activity and on the way out it's a continuous work day rule works in favor of the employee  in the end it works in favor of the employer because the clock hasn't started and it will be examples you've just been giving and what you say the rules are are series is what's worked the seven eighty five series says that if you are required to take a a seminar even if it's nothing to do with what you what you are employed to do it's contents of well if it's a voluntary seminar then it then there's a kind of a test well is it related to your work not the work is it going to advance your work or not it but if it's totally unrelated to your work but you're required to take the seminar whether it's after hours or right after class or right after the work it's compensable there are a whole series of lessons covered by the portal portal put portal right is an exception to the no this is the regulations point blank say it's covered there's no  argument on those who bring elections the notion that if it is compensable work it's covered there is an exception to there's an exception to what the employer requires he can require some things and yet not be liable for under under the act to pay for those things that's what the portal to portal act is about the will and we say those exceptions that he's a not required to pay for the transportation to and from the mine which is one a or a one of the portable to fifty for a one and then you don't get a two if it's a if it's a principal activity and the regulations on attending seminars does not discuss any exemption about re enter a way out it simply says that if the employer mandates you take a seminar no matter what it's on they have to pay you for the time so there's no of the portal act issue if it's a principal activity and what the regulations at seventy eighty five seventy eighty five say these are lists of things that are compensable because the employer told you to do it and it's whether it's fueling the truck at the end of the day you don't need to have the truck filled at the end of the day because you're a drug done driving so it's not integral indispensable to anything those are the kinds of things that the po doesn't cover because their principal activities and that they could i could sexual harassment training another one we require employees to go for sexual harassment training as that is that part of their minimus because it has a hold of me with the thinking says well this is like checking out you know but it's not and that's not a factual question for a jury but it's not it's not like checking out because they've already checked out you don't check out twice i mean you don't you don't check out twice and the difference between checking in because i don't have a checkout example with a different check in and a roll call and you must get paid for roll calls is that the employer tells you to be there at a certain time and do this thing where and that's compensable but if but if if you killed or if you put the one strong top of the checking out you break the camera and it's a very very small exception because generally speaking we want people not to work off the clock because this is what this case is all about working off the clock taking your honour's and you have four minutes thank you mr chief justice just a few points and robot all i'd like to start with what is the linchpin of principle activities principle activities obviously term introduced to the act by the portal to poor lacked the regulations to find that it's work of consequence now my friend would like you to say that the linchpin is whether it's required here's why that makes no sense at all whether you get into the fair labor standards act in the first instance is determined by whether it's required now it doesn't much do much good for congress to say don't worry about that of course we have an exception for you but the exception is also never satisfied as long as it's required that would give the exception i th especially as my friend describes drug testing it doesn't sound like any logical part of the process and i think that's why those things are not covered they're not covered not because the mr clement make it part of the economic process i mean at some point the court can obviously take police employers that want to lard on things that have nothing to do with the process and say you got to watch my car on the way out and as he describes the drug testing process you're actually diverted from your proper process  into the rest room and monitored while you do it it doesn't sound anything like an eagerness process and those activities are covered not because they are post luminary activities that are integral in indispensable those activities are covered because their work under the f l essay and the political portal exceptions for post luminary and preliminary activity simply don't apply and that covers car washing it covers drug testing it covers also these videos it really is quite different but the checkout process which is part of the process really does make this very close one of the point of clarification on this just to school you are exactly right when he said the seventy five series which they want to rely on are about hours worked under the fair labor standards act they say what's in the universe of things that are potentially subject to the exceptions of the portal to portal act the principle activities is defined regularly in the regulations in the seven ninety series which is all about the portable portal act and seventy ninety point eight it's hopefully entitled principal activities where the principal activity not anything that the employer requires but work of consequence and that gets you to this concept that work of consequence is things like cutting grapefruit or preparing every workstation in the facility or driving the bus that piece that gets people to the mine work of consequence is not checking in and checking out it is not going through security nobody gets paid to go through security all day now but also nobody gets paid to take a bath all day either and so that's right that's not a complete test you still have to ask the final question which is whether it's integral and indispensable to the principle activities and my friends really don't want to talk about that i think with good reason because this clearly is not integral in indispensable and i don't think you can make not stealing indispensable to the work day otherwise all the its employees can stay home away from the merchandise and they never steal the thing that would be their work function it just doesn't work the work function is to fulfill the orders when i say one last thing about your hype of your opening hypothetical justice kagan there is another difference between your hypothetical and this situation which is at least as i understood your hypothetical if an employee has to stay at their work station and twenty minute process goes on that's the employer requiring them to be on the premises for an extra twenty minutes that's much more like being in gauge to wait than waiting to engage they give it to you two ways and one was at your work station and the other was an employer who knowing that there was this  rule made it part of the ingress egress process my other question repeated again but even as to the modified hypothetical if you have to stay on the employer's premises for an extra twenty minutes that's closer to being engaged to wait as opposed to waiting to engage the allegations here are not that this process takes twenty five minutes it can take up to twenty five minutes if you're in the very back of the line and i think one of the many reasons not to adopt their rule is you don't want to create an incentive for every employee to try to get to the back of the line which is hardly going to speed things up thank you counsel the case is submitted