Sixth Circuit

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According to a recent decision, employers who want to keep employees on their premises for security checks after they have already clocked out must pay their employees to do so—at least in Pennsylvania.

In 2013, two Amazon.com employees filed a putative class action in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas against their employer, certain of Amazon’s affiliates, and Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., seeking compensation under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (“PMWA”), 43 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 333.101 et seq. for time spent undergoing a mandatory security check after their shifts had already ended. The plaintiffs worked in a warehouse in Pennsylvania where they performed tasks related to fulfilling customer orders placed on Amazon. At the end of their shifts, the plaintiffs were not allowed to immediately leave the premises, as they were required to remain at the warehouse to proceed through a screening process that included walking through a metal detector. If the alarm went off, the worker would be subject to a secondary screening process where a security guard would search the worker’s bags and personal items. The plaintiffs alleged that the entire screening process could take up to twenty minutes, or even more if there were delays.  The defendants did not compensate the workers for any of this time.

The Sixth Circuit has joined the Second and Ninth Circuits in their broad interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA) autodialer provision. In doing so, it has tipped the scale in a circuit split that is ripe for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

We wrote here previously regarding the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Shane Group v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan vacating a class action settlement because the district court improperly refused to unseal the parties’ substantive filings. In revisiting the district court’s sealing orders, the Court of Appeals found that the parties’ cursory justifications for their sealing requests were “patently inadequate.” And based on this failure to elucidate reasons for sealing, the Sixth Circuit vacated every one of the district court’s sealing orders. Since its decision in June, the Sixth Circuit had occasion to interpret and apply Shane Group, and in doing so, offered key learnings for litigants seeking to toe the line for compliance with the Sixth Circuit’s newly-pronounced standard.

Non-disclosure and confidentiality provisions can be an important aspect of resolving a case through settlement. But when one of the parties is a purported class, and the allegation is an antitrust violation, settlement and secrecy may be like water and oil.

This tension came to a head in Shane Group v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, in which the Sixth Circuit vacated a $30 million settlement between the defendant and a class of Michigan citizens and corporations, settling allegations of health insurance price fixing. The reason: the district court refused to unseal the parties’ substantive filings – including the Amended Complaint, the motion for class certification, and the expert report on which the settlement was based. When a group of class members moved to intervene to unseal parts of the record and adjourn Rule 23 fairness hearings until they could review the settlement, the district court denied their motion to intervene. In the district court’s own view, the settlement was “fair, reasonable, and adequate,” and thus, class members had no further need for information about the case.