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4 

INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC. v. BUSK 

Opinion of the Court 

pra, at 691–692. 

These decisions provoked a flood of litigation.  In the six 
months following this Court’s decision in Anderson, unions 
and  employees  filed  more  than  1,500  lawsuits  under  the 
FLSA.  S. Rep.  No.  37,  80th  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  pp.  2–3 
(1947).  These  suits  sought  nearly  $6  billion  in  back  pay 
and liquidated damages for various preshift and postshift 
activities.  Ibid. 

Congress  responded  swiftly.  It  found  that  the  FLSA 
had  “been  interpreted  judicially  in  disregard  of  long-
established  customs,  practices,  and  contracts  between 
employers  and  employees,  thereby  creating  wholly  unex-
pected  liabilities,  immense  in  amount  and  retroactive  in 
operation,  upon  employers.”    29  U. S. C.  §251(a).    Declar-
ing  the  situation  to  be  an  “emergency,”  Congress  found
that, if such interpretations “were permitted to stand, . . . 
the payment of such liabilities would bring about financial
ruin  of  many  employers”  and  “employees  would  receive
windfall  payments  . . .  for  activities  performed  by  them
without any expectation of reward beyond that included in 
their agreed rates of pay.”  §§251(a)–(b).

Congress  met  this  emergency  with  the  Portal-to-Portal
Act.    The  Portal-to-Portal  Act  exempted  employers  from 
liability for future claims based on two categories of work-
related activities as follows: 

“(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) [which covers
work compensable by contract or custom], no employer
shall  be  subject  to  any  liability  or  punishment  under 
the  Fair  Labor  Standards  Act  of  1938,  as  amended, 
. . .  on  account  of  the  failure  of  such  employer  . . . 
to  pay  an  employee  overtime  compensation,  for  or  on 
account  of  any  of  the  following  activities  of  such  em-
ployee  engaged  in  on  or  after  the  date  of  the  enact-
ment of this Act— 
“(1)  walking,  riding,  or  traveling  to  and  from  the  ac-