Apple Defeats Employee Bag Search Class Action Lawsuit

On Nov. 7, U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed a California class action against Apple Inc., which alleged that Apple employees should be paid for the time they spent waiting to have their bags searched by managers or security guards.

According to the bag search class action lawsuit, Apple had instituted a policy requiring bag searches of employees at all of its retail stores as part of an anti-theft policy. The Apple policy also allegedly required employees to have a “personal technology card” with the serial numbers of their Apple devices, so managers could check those serial numbers when employees would leave the retail store.

Lead plaintiffs Amanda Frlekin, Aaron Gregoroff, Seth Dowling, Debra Speicher, and Taylor Kalin alleged in the class action lawsuit filed in 2013 that they were required to clock out of work before getting their bags searched, and they spent significant time each week waiting for a manager to search their bags. The plaintiffs argued that they should be paid for that bag search time, because they were required to be there by Apple, and they were under Apple’s “control” during that time.

However, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup disagreed, finding the Apple employee bag search class action lawsuit limited its claims to “an employee who voluntarily brought a bag to work purely for personal convenience.” The court declared that “[t]he ability to bring a bag into Apple’s stores is simply an optional benefit with a string attached — the requirement to undergo searches.” Therefore, Judge Alsup reasoned, the employees were not under Apple’s “control,” and Apple is not required to pay employees for the time spent searching their bags.

The court compared the Apple employee bag search class action lawsuit to two other cases, one in which farm workers were required to take an employer’s bus to the work site, and another where the employer’s transportation shuttle was optional for employees. In the first case, the employer was required to pay wages to the employees for the travel time in the employer’s bus. In contrast, the court ruled against the employees in the second case, because the employer did not require them to take the employer’s shuttle.

In short, the court found that the “plaintiffs could all freely choose not to bring bags to work, thereby avoiding Apple’s restrictions during exit searches.”

“That free choice is fatal to [the plaintiffs’] claims,” Judge Alsup declared.

The Apple employee bag search class action lawsuit was originally a nationwide class action lawsuit, but all of the federal and state claims were previously dismissed because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. Only the California class action based on California state law remained, until this court ruling.

The plaintiffs are represented by Lee S. Shalov and Brett Gallaway of McLaughlin & Stern LLP and Kimberly A. Kralowec, Kathleen Styles Rogers, and Chad A. Saunders of Kralowec Law Group.

The Apple Employee Bag Search Class Action Lawsuit is Freklin, et al., v. Apple Inc., Case No. C 13-03451 WHA, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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