California employers that perform bag checks on employees in order to deter theft breathed a sigh of relief in 2015 after a California federal court’s ruling in Frlekin v. Apple Inc., No. C 13-03451, 2015 WL 6851424 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 7, 2015), which provided that state law does not require that Apple compensate hourly employees for time they spend undergoing security checks. The ruling followed another favorable decision in December 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, 135 S. Ct. 513, 518 (2014) that security checks do not constitute compensable work activities under federal law. After years of increased attention having been paid to bag check actions, the decisions slightly cooled the plaintiffs’ bar’s enthusiasm for such actions. But despite the victories, California employers should not let their guard down quite yet. A number of recent high-value settlements continue to make bag check claims attractive.
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