On July 13, 2022, Maryland’s Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, held that state wage law claims for certain travel pay survive summary judgment despite the fact that such payments are not required under the federal Portal-To-Portal Act (PPA or the Act). The Court of Appeals interprets Maryland law as requiring wage payments for time spent waiting and traveling to a worksite if the waiting site is considered a prescribed workplace.
Maryland employers should carefully review any requirements to take employer-provided transportation to a jobsite. Outside of Maryland — employers, particularly construction contractors — should keep an eye on other state courts hearing comparable cases and adopting similar reasoning requiring employers to compensate employees for employer-provided transportation.
The federal PPA excludes certain activities including traveling to and from a jobsite from the definition of compensable work. Specifically, any activities that occur prior to or after the “principal activity” the employee was hired to perform such as “walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance” are not compensable. While Maryland wage law does not expressly require compensation for travel time to and from a jobsite, the relevant statutes and corresponding regulations define “hours of work” as the time where a worker is “required by the employer to be on the employer’s premises, on duty, or at a prescribed workplace.”
In reviewing the statutory...
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