In Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc., a 5-2 Supreme Court today interprets a statute and regulation as requiring that employees be given 10-minute rest breaks where they are not on-duty or on-call. [Disclosure: Horvitz & Levy filed an amicus brief in the case.] The majority opinion by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar states that “[a] rest period, in short, must be a period of rest,” which means that employers must “relinquish any control over how employees spend their break time, and relieve their employees of all duties — including the obligation that an employee remain on call.” The issues were raised in a class action brought by private security guards who recovered a $90,000,000 judgment.
Justice Leondra Kruger, joined by Justice Carol Corrigan, writes a concurring and dissenting opinion. She agrees with the majority’s tautology that “[a] rest period . . . must be a period of rest,” but disagrees that being on-call is incompatible with rest. According to Justice Kruger, “a bare requirement to carry a radio, phone, pager, or other communications device in case of emergency does not constitute ‘work’ in any relevant sense of the term.”
The court reverses the Second District, Division One, Court of Appeal.