A federal appeals court offered a clear rule earlier this year in holding that employees must be paid for breaks lasting 20 minutes or less, but private suits on that issue have been few, and appear poised to remain so, practitioners say.
Employment lawyers on both the plaintiff and defense side acknowledged only a few pockets of wage-and-hour litigation on the paid-break issue, and usually in a different context than the one examined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Department of Labor v. Progressive Business Publications, where the court said forcing employees to clock in and out for bathroom and other short breaks violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
