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Page Number: 13

2 

INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC. v. BUSK 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring 

§790.8(c).  Here, by contrast, the security screenings were
not  “integral  and  indispensable”  to  the  employees’  other 
principal activities in this sense.  The screenings may, as
the Ninth Circuit observed below, have been in some way 
related  to  the  work  that  the  employees  performed  in  the 
warehouse, see 713 F. 3d 525, 531 (2013), but the employ-
ees could skip the screenings altogether without the safety
or effectiveness of their principal activities being substan-
tially impaired, see ante, at 7. 

Second,  the  Court  holds  also  that  the  screenings  were 
not  themselves  “ ‘principal  .  .  .  activities’ ”  the  employees 
were  “ ‘employed  to  perform.’ ”    Ibid.  (quoting  29  U.  S.  C. 
§254(a)(1)).  On this point, I understand the Court’s anal-
ysis  to  turn  on  its  conclusion  that  undergoing  security
screenings  was  not  itself  work  of  consequence  that  the
employees  performed  for  their  employer.    See  ante,  at  7. 
Again, I agree.  As the statute’s use of the words “prelimi-
nary”  and  “postliminary”  suggests,  §254(a)(2),  and  as  our 
precedents make clear, the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 is
primarily  concerned  with  defining  the  beginning  and  end 
of  the  workday.  See  IBP,  Inc.  v.  Alvarez,  546  U.  S.  21, 
34–37 (2005).  It distinguishes between activities that are 
essentially  part  of  the  ingress  and  egress  process,  on  the 
one hand, and activities that constitute the actual “work of 
consequence  performed  for  an  employer,”  on  the  other 
hand.  29  CFR  §790.8(a);  see  also  ibid.  (clarifying  that  a 
principal  activity  need  not  predominate  over  other  activi-
ties,  and  that  an  employee  could  be  employed  to  perform 
multiple  principal  activities).  The  security  screenings  at
issue  here  fall  on  the  “preliminary  .  .  .  or  postliminary” 
side of this line.  29 U. S. C. §254(a)(2).  The searches were 
part of the process by which the employees egressed their
place of work, akin to checking in and out and waiting in
line to do so—activities that Congress clearly deemed to be 
preliminary  or  postlimininary.    See  S.  Rep.  No.  48,  80th
Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  47  (1947);  29  CFR  §790.7(g).    Indeed,  as