On October 13, 2026, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revived a putative collective and class action alleging that discount supermarket chain Lidl failed to pay grocery workers for time spent waiting outside locked stores for a manager to let them in. The decision in Santos v. Lidl US, LLC, No. 25-2357 (2d Cir. Oct. 13, 2026), holds that when an employer requires employees to report at a set time, ready to work, and they can’t start for reasons beyond their control, the wait is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Portal-to-Portal Act (PPA) notwithstanding.
The plaintiff worked opening shifts at two Lidl stores on Long Island, scheduled from 5:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. She alleged that Lidl required opening-shift employees to report fifteen minutes before the listed start time and that the time clocks were inside the store. Approximately once a week, the opening manager didn’t arrive until 5:00 a.m. or later. Employees stood outside, unable to clock in, and weren’t paid for the wait.
The Eastern District of New York dismissed the plaintiff’s FLSA and New York Labor Law (NYLL) time-shaving claims under the PPA, which excludes “preliminary” and “postliminary” activities from compensable time. These are activities that occur before or after the employee’s principal activities (the work the employee is employed to perform) and that are not “integral and indispensable” to that work, such as walking from the...
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