For once I agree with Rand Paul. I also don't think Loretta Lynch should be Attorney General

[Jim Lane]

22. Please alert Skinner that MIRT is a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.

An evil corporation (Democratic Underground LLC) is getting people to do its work without pay. Work without pay is involuntary servitude. This is what brave men died at Gettysburg to stop!

The serious answer to your post is that courts have never interpreted "involuntary" the way you do. It refers only to a legal compulsion. It excludes cases where the person has agreed to do something.

Issues have been raised about whether the Thirteenth Amendment is violated by compulsory jury duty or by military conscription. Both involve coercion by the government and are not based on any voluntary act of the person involved.

In the Amazon case, by contrast, the government is not compelling anyone to do anything. In fact, it's the workers who want to involve the government's power, asking it to compel the staffing company to pay them for the screening time.

Furthermore, the workers have all voluntarily agreed to work there. Each of them is free to say "I don't voluntarily agree to spend time going through this screening procedure," but in that case the company is free to say "Then you're fired." The Thirteenth Amendment does not mean that someone can take a job with a private employer but refuse to perform some of the duties of that job.

I realize you're not saying that they should be able to refuse, only that they should be paid for the time they spend. I personally think they should be paid. But we have to recognize that their legal right comes only from the FLSA, and that it was amended to exclude activities like the security screening. The answer is still to persuade Congress to change the law, rather than to criticize Obama or his Supreme Court appointees.