Wage-Hour Class Action Certification: Overby Reinforces That Specifics, Not High-Level Allegations, Matter

Takeaways

• The Fourth Circuit’s Overby decision vacated certification of a wage and hour class action, holding that broad allegations of a common pay practice could not overcome potentially significant differences in employees’ alleged pre- and post-shift work.
• General allegations that employees were paid only for scheduled shift time will not necessarily establish commonality or predominance if determining liability requires individualized inquiries.
• The decision reinforces that employers can defeat class certification where determining liability would require individualized inquiries into tasks performed, timing, location, job duties, departments or governing legal standards.

Related link

• Overby v. Anheuser-Busch, LLC

Article

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated a district court’s order certifying a Rule 23 class in a suit filed by brewery workers seeking pay for pre- and post-shift activities. Overby v. Anheuser-Busch, LLC, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 17279 (4th Cir. June 15, 2026).

The decision is a useful reminder that class certification should not rest on general allegations of a common pay practice when liability turns on what individual employees actually did, where they did it, and when.

The Fourth Circuit has jurisdiction over federal courts in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Off-the-Clock Claims

Anheuser-Busch employs approximately 400 hourly workers at its Williamsburg, Virginia, location who work in one of five functional departments. Employees swipe a badge and enter the brewery’s various facilities through a turnstile. The swipe data is stored in the company’s electronic timekeeping system, but the company does not compensate employees according to the swipe data. Rather, it pays employees based on scheduled shift hours.

Two employees alleged they were required to perform tasks outside their scheduled shifts, including donning and doffing personal protective equipment (PPE), complying with temperature checks and other COVID-era protocols, participating in shift handoff meetings, and securing or putting away tools. They filed suit under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Virginia wage laws seeking to represent similarly situated workers at the Williamsburg location.

Class Certification Vacated

Citing a “corporate policy of failing to compensate Plaintiffs for all mandatory pre- and/or post-shift work,” the district court certified a Rule 23(b)(3) state law class of all nonexempt employees currently or formerly employed at the Williamsburg facility. On interlocutory appeal, the Fourth Circuit vacated the order, finding that the lower court erred in relying on “generalized company policies” to satisfy Rule 23’s predominance and commonality requirements.

The appeals court cited its precedential decision in Stafford v. Bojangles’ Restaurants, Inc., 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 29870 (4th Cir. 2024). In Stafford (issued while Anheuser-Busch’s decertification motion was pending before the district court), the appeals court held that class certification could not be based solely on the broad application of company policies. Reliance on company policies can “too often disguise the dissimilarity of prospective class members,” the appeals court explained. “The present case epitomizes this exact trap.”

Simply asking whether the employer failed to pay for mandatory pre- and post-shift work ignores key threshold questions such as whether each employee performed the alleged activities, whether the employer required those activities to be performed outside shift time, where and when the activities occurred, and which legal standard applied. The Fourth Circuit said the district court ignored Stafford when it certified the class and “failed to observe the myriad variations in employees’ circumstances.”

In this case, several differences among employees required more particularized assessment:

• Some employees were never subject to COVID-19 protocols because they were hired after the protocols ended. 
• Some employees participated in handoff meetings regularly, some irregularly, and some not at all. 
• Some donned and doffed PPE at home, some did so at work outside shift time, and others performed those activities during paid shift time.

Moreover, 2022 changes to Virginia overtime law meant that proposed class members could be subject to different legal standards depending on the period in which they worked.

The appeals court also found the class definition, which effectively included all hourly employees at the brewery during the relevant period, was overbroad.

Accordingly, the Fourth Circuit remanded the case for further proceedings, leaving open the possibility that the district court could certify narrower, discrete subclasses (each of which would need to independently satisfy Rule 23) or deny certification altogether.

Employer Takeaways

Plaintiffs often frame off-the-clock claims around a centralized timekeeping rule, pay practice, or uniform policy (such as the expectation that employees be ready to work at the start of a shift). The Fourth Circuit made clear, however, that Rule 23 requires more than a high-level allegation of a common practice. Courts must ask whether liability can be determined with common proof where the record shows meaningful differences in job duties, departments, practices, locations, time periods, or supervisor expectations.

Class certification is not appropriate simply because employees share an employer, a facility, or a general timekeeping system. In pre- and post-shift wage and hour cases, those differences may be especially important because compensability often turns on the nature of the task, whether the employer required it, whether it was integral and indispensable to the job, and whether it occurred before, during, or after paid shifts.

Please contact a Jackson Lewis attorney if you have questions about the Fourth Circuit’s decision or the defense of wage and hour class and collective actions generally.