1 (Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2013

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.


## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

SANDIFER ET AL

. v . UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

No. 12–417. Argued November 4, 2013—Decided January 27, 2014

Petitioner Sandifer and others filed a putative collective action under

the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, seeking backpay for time spent donning and doffing pieces of protec tive gear that they assert re

spondent United States Steel Corp oration requires workers to wear because of hazards at its steel plants. U. S. Steel contends that this donning-and-doffing time, which would otherwise be compensable under the Act, is noncompensable under a provision of its collective

bargaining agreement with petitioners’ union. That provision’s valid

ity depends on 29 U. S. C. §203( o ), which allows parties to collectively bargain over whether “time spent in changing clothes . . . at the be

ginning or end of each workday” mu st be compensated. The District Court granted U. S. Steel summary judgment in pertinent part, hold

ing that petitioners’ donning and doffing constituted “changing clothes” under §203( o ). It also assumed that any time spent donning and doffing items that were not “clothes” was “ de minimis ” and hence noncompensable. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.

Held : The time petitioners spend donni ng and doffing their protective

gear is not compensable by operation of §203( o ). Pp. 3–15.

(a) This Court initially constr ued compensability under the Fair Labor Standards Act expansively. See, e.g. , Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. , 328 U. S. 680. The Act was amended in 1949, however, to provide that the compensability of time spent “changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday” is a subject appro

priately committed to collective bargaining, §203( o ). Whether peti

tioners’ donning and doffing qualifies as “changing clothes” depends on the meaning of that statutory phrase. Pp. 3–6.

(b) The term “clothes,” which is otherwise undefined, is “interpret

ed as taking [its] ordinary, contemporary, common meaning.” Perrin2 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Syllabus

v. United States , 444 U. S. 37, 42. In dictionaries from the era of §203( o )’s enactment, “clothes” denotes items that are both designed and used to cover the body and are commonly regarded as articles of dress. Nothing in §203( o )’s text or context suggests anything other than this ordinary meaning. There is no basis for petitioners’ propo

sition that the unmodified term “clothes” somehow omits protective clothing. Section 203( o )’s exception applies only when the changing of clothes is “an integral and indisp ensable part of the principal activ

ities for which covered workmen are employed,” Steiner v. Mitchell

, 350 U. S. 247, 256, and thus otherwise compensable under the Act. See 29 U. S. C. §254(a). And protective gear is the only clothing that is integral and indispensable to th e work of many occupations, such as butchers and longshoremen. Petiti oners’ position is also incompat

ible with the historical context of §203( o )’s passage, contradicting contemporaneous Labor Department regulations and dictum in Stei

ner , see 350 U. S., at 248, 254–255

. The interpretation adopted here leaves room for distinguishing between clothes and wearable items that are not clothes, such as some equipment and devices. The view of respondent and its amici that “clothes” encompasses the entire out

fit that one puts on to be ready for work is also devoid of any textual foundation. Pp. 6–10.

(c) While the normal meaning of “changing clothes” connotes sub

stitution, “changing” also carried th e meaning to “alter” at the time of §203( o )’s enactment. The broader stat utory context makes plain that “time spent in changing clothes” includes time spent in altering dress. Whether one exchanges str eet clothes for work clothes or simply chooses to layer one over th e other may be a matter of purely personal choice, and §203( o ) should not be read to allow workers to opt into or out of its coverage at random or at will when another reading is textually permissible. Pp. 10–11.

(d) Applying these principles here , it is evident that the donning and doffing in this case qualifies as “changing clothes” under §203( o ). Of the 12 items at issue, only 3—safety glasses, earplugs, and a res

pirator—do not fit within the elabora ted interpretation of “clothes.” Apparently concerned that federal judges would have to separate the minutes spent clothes-changing an d washing from the minutes de

voted to other activities during the relevant period, some Courts of Appeals have invoked the doctrine de minimis non curat lex (the law does not take account of trifles). But that doctrine does not fit com

fortably within this statute, which is all about trifles. A more appro

priate way to proceed is for courts to ask whether the period at issue

can, on the whole , be fairly characterized as “time spent in changing clothes or washing.” If an employee devotes the vast majority of that time to putting on and off equipmen t or other non-clothes items, the3 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Syllabus

entire period would not qualify as “time spent in changing clothes” under §203( o ), even if some clothes items were also donned and doffed. But if the vast majority of the time is spent in donning and doffing “clothes” as defined here, the entire period qualifies, and the time spent putting on and off other items need not be subtracted. Here, the Seventh Circuit agreed with the District Court’s conclusion that the time spent donning and do ffing safety glasses and earplugs
was minimal. And this Court is di sinclined to disturb the District Court’s additional factual finding, not addressed by the Seventh Cir

cuit, that the respirators were do nned and doffed as needed during the normal workday and thus fell beyond §203( o )’s scope. Pp. 12–15.

678 F. 3d 590, affirmed.

S CALIA

, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which R OBERTS

, C. J., and K ENNEDY , T HOMAS , G INSBURG , B REYER , A LITO

, and K AGAN

, JJ., joined, and in which S OTOMAYOR

, J., joined except as to footnote 7._________________

_________________ 1 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash

ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.


## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 12–417

CLIFTON SANDIFER, ET AL ., PETITIONERS v. UNITED
STATES STEEL CORPORATION

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

[January 27, 2014]

J USTICE S CALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.*
The question before us is the meaning of the phrase “changing clothes” as it appears in the Fair Labor Stand

ards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq. (2006 ed. and Supp. V).

I. Facts and Procedural History
Petitioner Clifton Sandifer, among others, filed suit under the Fair Labor Standards Act against respondent United States Steel Corporation in the District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. The plaintiffs in this putative collective action are a group of current or former employees of respondent’s steelmaking facilities. 1 As

——————

* J USTICE S OTOMAYOR joins this opinion except as to footnote 7.

1 Petitioners filed this action under 29 U. S. C. §216(b), which estab

lishes a cause of action that may be maintained “by any one or more employees for and in behalf of hims elf or themselves and other employ

ees similarly situated.” Pending resolution of the instant summary

judgment dispute, a Magistrate Judge set aside a motion to certify the suit as a collective action, see No. 2:07–CV–443 RM, 2009 WL 3430222, *1, n. 1 (ND Ind., Oct. 15, 2009), but petitioners assert that their ranks are about 800 strong.2 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

relevant here, they seek bac kpay for time spent donning and doffing various pieces of protective gear. Petitioners assert that respondent requires workers to wear all of the items because of hazards regularly encountered in steel plants. Petitioners point specifically to 12 of what they state are the most common kinds of required protective gear: a flame-retardant jacket, pair of pants, and hood; a hardhat; a “snood”; “wristlets”; work gloves; leggings; “metatarsal” boots; safety glasses; earplugs; and a respirator. 2 At bot

tom, petitioners want to be paid for the time they have spent putting on and taking off those objects. In the ag

gregate, the amount of time—and thus money—involved is likely to be quite large. Because this donning-and-doffing time would otherwise be compensable under the Act, U. S. Steel’s contention of noncompensability stands or falls upon the validity of a provision of its collective-bargaining agreement with petitioners’ union, which says that this time is noncompensable. 3 The validity of that provision depends, in turn, upon the applicability of 29 U. S. C. §203( o ) to the time at issue. That subsection allows par

ties to decide, as part of a collective-bargaining agreement, that “time spent in changing clothes . . . at the beginning or end of each workday” is noncompensable. The District Court granted summary judgment in perti

nent part to U. S. Steel, holding that donning and doffing

——————

2 The opinions below include descriptions of some of the items. See 678 F. 3d 590, 592 (CA7 2012); 2009 WL 3430222, *2, *6. And the opinion of the Court of Appeals prov ides a photograph of a male model wearing the jacket, pants, hardhat, snood, gloves, boots, and glasses. 678 F. 3d, at 593.

3 The District Court concluded that the collective-bargaining agree

ment provided that the activities at issue here were noncompensable, 2009 WL 3430222, *10, and the Seventh Circuit upheld that conclusion, 678 F. 3d, at 595. That issue was not among the questions on which we granted certiorari, and we take the import of the collective-bargaining agreement to be a given.3 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

the protective gear constitu ted “changing clothes” within the meaning of §203( o ). No. 2:07–CV–443 RM, 2009 WL 3430222, *4–*10 (ND Ind., Oct. 15, 2009). The District
Court further assumed that even if certain items—the hardhat, glasses, and earplugs—were not “clothes,” the time spent donning and doffing them was “ de minimis ” and hence noncompensable. Id., at *6. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld those conclusions. 678 F. 3d 590, 593–595 (2012). 4 We granted certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2013), and now
affirm.

II. Legal Background
The Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, governs minimum wages and maximum hours for non-exempt “employees who in any workweek [are] engaged in com

merce or in the production of goods for commerce, or [are] employed in an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce.” 29 U. S. C. §206(a) (minimum wages); §207(a) (maximum hours); see §213 (exemptions). The Act provides that “employee” generally means “any individual employed by an employer,” §203(e)(1), and, in turn, provides that to “employ” is “to suffer or permit to work,” §203(g). The Act did not, however, define the key terms “work”
and “workweek”—an omission that soon let loose a land

slide of litigation. See IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez , 546 U. S. 21, 25–26 (2005). This Court gave those terms a broad read

ing, culminating in its holding in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co. , 328 U. S. 680 (1946), that “the statutory

——————

4 Petitioners also sought, inter alia , backpay for time spent traveling between the locker rooms where they don and doff at least some of the protective gear and their workstations . The District Court denied that portion of respondent’s motion for summary judgment, 2009 WL 3430222, *11, and the Seventh Circuit reversed, 678 F. 3d, at 595–598. That issue is not before this Court, so we express no opinion on it.4 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

workweek includes all time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer’s premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace.” Id. , at 690–691. That period, Anderson explained, encompassed time spent “pursu[ing] certain preliminar y activities after arriving . . . , such as putting on aprons and overalls [and] remov

ing shirts.” Id. , at 692–693. “These activities,” the Court declared, “are clearly work” under the Act. Id. , at 693. Organized labor seized on the Court’s expansive con

struction of compensability by filing what became known as “portal” actions (a reference to the “portals” or entranc

es to mines, at which workers put on their gear). “PORTAL PAY SUITS EXCEED A BILLION,” announced a newspaper headline in late 1946. N. Y. Times, Dec. 29, 1946, p. 1. Stating that the Fair Labor Standards Act had been “interpreted judicially in disregard of long

established customs, practi ces, and contracts between employers and employees,” Congress responded by passing the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 84, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §251 et seq. (2006 ed. and Supp. V). §251(a). The Portal-to-Portal Act limited the scope of employers’ liability in various ways. As relevant here, it excluded from mandatorily compensable time

“activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to [the] principal activity or activities [that an employee is employed to perform], which occur either prior to the time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at wh ich he ceases, such prin

cipal activity or activities.” 61 Stat. 87, 29 U. S. C. §254(a)(2).

The Department of Labor promulgated a regulation explaining that the Portal-to-P ortal Act did not alter what
is known as the “continuous workday rule,” under which compensable time comprises “the period between the5 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

commencement and completion on the same workday of an employee’s principal activity or activities . . . [,] whether or not the employee engages in work throughout all of that period.” 12 Fed. Reg. 7658 (1947); 29 CFR §790.6(b) (2013). Of particular importance to this case, a Labor Department interpretive bulletin also specified that whereas “changing clothes” and “washing up or shower

ing” “would be considered ‘preliminary’ or ‘postliminary’ activities” when “performed outside the workday and . . . under the conditions normally present,” those same activi

ties “may in certain situations be so directly related to the specific work the employee is employed to perform that [they] would be regarded as an integral part of the em

ployee’s ‘principal activity.’ ” 12 Fed. Reg. 7659, and n. 49; 29 CFR §790.7, and n. 49. In 1949, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards
Act to address the conduct disc ussed in that interpretive bulletin—changing clothes and washing—by adding the provision presently at issue:

“Hours Worked.—In determining for the purposes of [the minimum-wage and maximum-hours sections] of this title the hours for which an employee is em

ployed, there shall be excluded any time spent in changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday which was excluded from measured working time during the week involved by the express terms of or by custom or practice under a bona fide collective-bargaining agreement applicable to the par

ticular employee.” 63 Stat. 911, 29 U. S. C. §203( o ).

Simply put, the statute prov ides that the compensability of time spent changing clothes or washing is a subject appropriately committed to collective bargaining.

In Steiner v. Mitchell , 350 U. S. 247 (1956), the Court echoed the Labor Department’s 1947 regulations by hold

ing that “changing clothes and showering” can, under6 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

some circumstances, be considered “an integral and indis

pensable part of the principal activities for which covered workmen are employed,” reasoning that §203( o ) “clear[ly] impli[ed]” as much. Id. , at 254–256. And in IBP , we applied Steiner to treat as compensable the donning and doffing of protective gear so mewhat similar to that at issue here, 546 U. S., at 30. We said that “any activity that is ‘integral and indispensable’ to a ‘principal activity’ is itself a ‘principal activity’ ” under §254(a), id. , at 37. As relevant to the question before us, U. S. Steel does not dispute the Seventh Circuit’s conclusion that “[h]ad the clothes-changing time in this case not been rendered noncompensable pursuant to [§]203( o ), it would have been a principal activity.” 678 F. 3d, at 596. Petitioners, how

ever, quarrel with the premise, arguing that the donning and doffing of protective gear does not qualify as “chang

ing clothes.”

III. Analysis
A. “Clothes”
We begin by examining the meaning of the word
“clothes.” 5 It is a “fundamental canon of statutory con

struction” that, “unless otherwise defined, words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, com

mon meaning.” Perrin v. United States , 444 U. S. 37, 42 (1979). Dictionaries from the era of §203( o )’s enactment indicate
that “clothes” denotes items that are both designed and used to cover the body and are commonly regarded as articles of dress . See Webster’s New International Dic

tionary of the English Language 507 (2d ed. 1950) (Web

ster’s Second) (defining “clothes” as “[c]overing for the

——————

5 Although the Labor Department has construed §203( o ) on a number of occasions, the Government has expressly declined to ask us to defer to those interpretations, which ha ve vacillated considerably over the

years.7 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

human body; dress; vestments; vesture”); see also, e.g. , 2 Oxford English Dictionary 524 (1933) (defining “clothes” as “[c]overing for the person; wearing apparel; dress, raiment, vesture”). That is what we hold to be the mean

ing of the word as used in §203( o ). Although a statute may make “a departure from the natural and popular acceptation of language,” Greenleaf v. Goodrich , 101 U. S. 278, 284–285 (1880) (citing Maillard v. Lawrence , 16 How. 251 (1854)), nothing in the text or context of §203( o ) sug

gests anything other than the ordinary meaning of
“clothes.” Petitioners argue that the word “clothes” is too indeter

minate to be ascribed any general meaning but that,
whatever it includes , it necessarily excludes items de

signed and used to protect against workplace hazards. That position creates a distinction between “protection,” on the one hand, and “decency or comfort,” on the other—a distinction that petitioners appear to have derived from Webster’s Second, which elabora tes that “clothes” is “a general term for whatever coveri ng is worn, or is made to be worn, for decency or comfort .” Webster’s Second 507 (emphasis added). But that definition does not exclude, either explicitly or implicit ly, items with a protective function, since “protection” and “comfort” are not incom

patible, and are often synonymous. A parasol protects against the sun, enhancing the comfort of the bearer—just as work gloves protect against scrapes and cuts, enhanc

ing the comfort of the wearer. Petitioners further assert that protective items of apparel are referred to as “cloth

ing” rather than “clothes.” They point out that, when introduced by the adjective “protective,” the noun “cloth

ing” is used more commonly than “clothes.” That is true enough, but it seems to us explained by euphonic prefer

ence rather than difference in meaning. We see no basis for the proposition that the unmodified term “clothes” somehow omits protective clothing.8 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

Petitioners’ proffered distinct ion, moreover, runs the risk of reducing §203( o ) to near nothingness. The statutory compensation requirement to which §203( o ) provides an exception embraces the changing of clothes only when that conduct constitutes “an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities fo r which covered workmen are employed.” Steiner , 350 U. S., at 256. But protective gear
is the only clothing that is integral and indispensable to the work of factory workers, butchers, longshoremen, and a host of other occupations. Petitioners’ definition of “clothes” would largely limit the application of §203( o ) to what might be called workers’ costumes, worn by such employees as waiters, doormen, and train conductors. Petitioners insist that their definition excludes only items with some specific work-hazard-related protective func

tion, but that limitation essentially abandons the asser

tion that clothes are for decency or comfort, leaving no
basis whatever for the distinction. Petitioners’ position is also incompatible with the histor

ical context surrounding §203( o )’s passage, since it flatly contradicts an illustration provided by the Labor Depart

ment’s 1947 regulations to show how “changing clothes” could be intimately related to a principal activity. See 29 CFR §790.7, and n. 49. Those regulations cited the situa

tion in which “an employee in a chemical plant . . . cannot perform his [job] without putting on certain clothes” and specified that “[s]uch a situation may exist where the changing of clothes on the employer’s premises is required by law, by rules of the employer, or by the nature of the work.” 12 Fed. Reg. 7660, and n. 65; 29 CFR §790.8(c), and n. 65. And petitioners’ position contradicts this Court’s only prior opinion purporting to interpret §203( o ).
Steiner , announced less than a decade after the statute’s passage, suggested in dictum that, were there a pertinent provision of a collective-bargaining agreement, §203( o ) would have applied to the facts of that case—where work

-9 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

ers “ma[d]e extensive use of dangerously caustic and toxic materials, and [we]re compelled by circumstances, includ

ing vital considerations of health and hygiene, to change clothes” on the job site. 350 U. S., at 248, 254–255. Petitioners contend that any attempt at a general defi

nition of “clothes” will cast a net so vast as to capture all manner of marginal things—from bandoliers to barrettes to bandages. Yet even acknowledging that it may be impossible to eliminate all vagueness when interpreting a word as wide-ranging as “clothes,” petitioners’ fanciful hypotheticals give us little pause. The statutory context
makes clear that the “clothes” referred to are items that are integral to job performance; the donning and doffing of
other items would create no cl aim to compensation under the Act, and hence no need for the §203( o ) exception. Moreover, even with respect to items that can be regarded as integral to job performance, our definition does not embrace the view, adopted by some Courts of Appeals, that “clothes” means essentially anything worn on the body—including accessories, tools, and so forth. See, e.g. , Salazar v. Butterball, LLC , 644 F. 3d 1130, 1139–1140 (CA10 2011) (“clothes” are “items or garments worn by a person” and include “knife holders”). The construction we adopt today is considerably more contained. Many accessories—necklaces and knapsacks, for instance—are not “both designed and used to cover the body.” Nor are tools “commonly regarded as articles of dress.” Our definition leaves room for distinguishing between clothes and wear

able items that are not clothes, such as some equipment
and devices. 6 Respondent and its amici , by contrast, give the term in

——————

6 Petitioners and their amici insist that equipment can never be clothes. While we do not believe that every wearable piece of equip

ment qualifies—for example, a wristwatch—our construction of “clothes” does not exclude all object s that could conceivably be charac

terized as equipment.10 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

question a capacious construction, effectively echoing the Courts of Appeals mentioned above. On this view, “clothes” encompasses the entire outfit that one puts on to be ready for work. That interp retation is, to be sure, more readily administrable, but it is even more devoid of a textual foundation than petitioners’ offering. Congress could have declared bargainable under §203( o ) “time spent in changing outfits ,” or “time spent in putting on and off all the items needed for work .” For better or worse, it used
the narrower word “clothes.” “The role of this Court is to apply the statute as it is written—even if we think some other approach might accord with good policy.” Burrage v. United States

, ante at 14 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted).

B. “Changing”
Having settled upon the meaning of “clothes,” we must now consider the meaning of “changing.” Petitioners
assert that when used with ce rtain objects—such as “tire,” “diaper,” or, indeed, “clothes”—the term “changing” connotes substitution. That is undoubtedly true. See Webster’s Second 448 (defining “change” as “to make substitution of, for, or among, often among things of the same kind
. . . ; as, to change one’s clothes”). One would not normally say he has changed clothes when he puts on an overcoat. Petitioners conclude from this that items of protective gear that are put on over the employee’s street clothes are not covered by §203( o ). We disagree. Although it is true that the normal mean

ing of “changing clothes” connotes substitution, the phrase is certainly able to have a different import. The term “changing” carried two common meanings at the time of §203( o )’s enactment: to “substitute” and to “alter.” See,

e.g., 2 Oxford English Dictionary 268 (defining “change,” among other verb forms, as “to substitute another (or others) for, replace by another (or others)” and “[t]o make11 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

(a thing) other than it was; to render different, alter, modify, transmute”). We think that despite the usual meaning of “changing clothes,” the broader statutory context makes it plain that “time spent in changing clothes” includes time spent in altering dress. The object of §203( o ) is to permit collective bargaining over the compensability of clothes-changing time and to promote the predictability ac hieved through mutually beneficial negotiation. There can be little predictability, and hence little meaningful negotiation, if “changing” means only “substituting.” Whether one actually ex

changes street clothes for work clothes or simply layers garments atop one another after arriving on the job site is often a matter of purely personal choice. That choice may be influenced by such happenstances and vagaries as what month it is, what styles are in vogue, what time the em

ployee wakes up, what mode of transportation he uses, and so on. As the Fourth Circuit has put it, if the statute imposed a substitution requirement “compensation for putting on a company-issued shirt might turn on some

thing as trivial as whether the employee did or did not take off the t-shirt he wore into work that day.” Sepulveda

v. Allen Family Foods, Inc. , 591 F. 3d 209, 216 (2009). Where another reading is textually permissible, §203( o ) should not be read to allow workers to opt into or out of its coverage at random or at will. 7

——————

7 This Court has stated that “exemp tions” in the Fair Labor Stand

ards Act “are to be narrowly construed against the employers seeking to
assert them.” Arnold v. Ben Kanowsky, Inc. , 361 U. S. 388, 392 (1960). We need not disapprove that statem ent to resolve the present case. The exemptions from the Act generally reside in §213, which is entitled “Exemptions” and classifies certain kinds of workers as uncovered by various provisions. Thus, in Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp.

, 567 U. S. ___, ___–___, n. 21 (2012) (s lip op., at 19–20, n. 21), we de

clared the narrow-construction prin ciple inapplicable to a provision appearing in §203, entitled “Definitions.”12 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

C. Application
Applying the foregoing principles to the facts of this case, we hold that petitioners’ donning and doffing of the protective gear at issue qualifies as “changing clothes” within the meaning of §203( o ). Petitioners have pointed to 12 particular items: a flame

retardant jacket, pair of pants, and hood; a hardhat; a snood; wristlets; work gloves; leggings; metatarsal boots; safety glasses; earplugs; and a respirator. The first nine clearly fit within the interpre tation of “clothes” elaborated above: they are both designed and used to cover the body and are commonly regarded as articles of dress. That proposition is obvious with respect to the jacket, pants, hood, and gloves. The hardhat is simply a type of hat. The snood is basically a hood that also covers the neck and upper shoulder area; on the ski slopes, one might call it a “balaclava.” The wristlets are essentially detached shirt

sleeves. The leggings look much like traditional legwarm

ers, but with straps. And the metatarsal boots—more commonly known as “steel-toed ” boots—are just a special
kind of shoe. The remaining three items, by contrast, do not satisfy our standard. Whereas glasses and earplugs may have a covering function, we do not believe that they are commonly regarded as articles of dress. And a respirator obviously falls short on both grounds. The question is whether the time devoted to the putting on and off of these items must be deducted from the noncompensable time. If so, federal judges must be assigned the task of separating the minutes spent clothes-changing and washing from the
minutes devoted to other activi ties during the period in question. Some Courts of Appeals, including the Court of Appeals in this case, have sought to avoid, or at least mitigate, this difficulty by invoking the doctrine de minimis non curat
lex (the law does not take account of trifles). This, they13 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

hold, enables them to declare noncompensable a few minutes actually spent on something other than clothes

changing—to wit, donning and doffing non-clothes items. Although the roots of the de minimis doctrine stretch to ancient soil, its application in the present context began
with Anderson . There, the Court declared that because “[s]plit-second absurdities are not justified by the actuali

ties of working conditions or by the policy of the Fair Labor Standards Act,” such “trifles” as “a few seconds or minutes of work beyond the scheduled working hours” may be “disregarded.” 328 U. S., at 692. “We [thus] do not . . . preclude the application of a de minimis rule.” Ibid.
We doubt that the de minimis doctrine can properly be applied to the present case. To be sure, Anderson included “putting on aprons and overalls” and “removing shirts” as activities to which “it is appropriate to apply a de minimis
doctrine.” Id. , at 692–693. It said that, however, in the context of determining what preliminary activities had to be counted as part of the gross workweek under §207(a) of
the Fair Labor Standards Act. 8 A de minimis doctrine does not fit comfortably within the statute at issue here, which, it can fairly be said, is all about trifles—the rela

tively insignificant periods of time in which employees wash up and put on various items of clothing needed for their jobs. Or to put it in the context of the present case,

there is no more reason to disregard the minute or so necessary to put on glasses, earplugs, and respirators,
than there is to regard the minute or so necessary to put on a snood. If the statute in question requires courts to

——————

8 We note, moreover, that even in that context, the current regula

tions of the Labor Department apply a stricter de minimis standard
than Anderson expressed. They specify th at “[a]n employer may not arbitrarily fail to count as hours worked any part, however small, of the employee’s fixed or regular working time or practically ascertainable period of time he is regularly requir ed to spend on duties assigned to him.” 29 CFR §785.47.14 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP.

Opinion of the Court

select among trifles, de minimis non curat lex is not Latin
for close enough for government work. That said, we nonetheless agree with the basic percep

tion of the Courts of Appeals that it is most unlikely Congress meant §203( o ) to convert federal judges into time-study professionals. That is especially so since the conse

quence of dispensing with the intricate exercise of separat

ing the minutes spent clothes-changing and washing from the minutes devoted to other activities is not to prevent compensation for the uncovered segments, but merely to leave the issue of compensation to the process of collective bargaining. We think it is possible to give the text of §203( o ) a meaning that avoids such relatively inconse

quential judicial involvement in “a morass of difficult, fact

specific determinations,” Sepulveda , 591 F. 3d, at 218. The forerunner of §203( o )—the Portal-to-Portal Act provision whose interpretation by the Labor Department prompted its enactment—focused narrowly on the activi

ties involved: “activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to [the employee’s] principal activity or activ

ities.” §254(a)(2). Section 203( o ), by contrast, is addressed not to certain “activities,” but to “time spent” on certain activities, viz., “changing clothes or washing.” Just as one can speak of “spending the day skiing” even when less

than-negligible portions of the day are spent having lunch or drinking hot toddies, so also one can speak of “time spent changing clothes and washing” when the vast pre

ponderance of the period in question is devoted to those activities. To be sure, su ch an imprecise and colloquial usage will not ordinarily be a ttributed to a statutory text, but for the reasons we have discussed we think that ap

propriate here. The question for courts is whether the period at issue can, on the whole , be fairly characterized as “time spent in changing clothes or washing.” If an em

ployee devotes the vast majority of the time in question to putting on and off equipment or other non-clothes items15 Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014)

Opinion of the Court

(perhaps a diver’s suit and tank) the entire period would not qualify as “time spent in changing clothes” under §203( o ), even if some clothes items were donned and doffed as well. But if the vast majority of the time is spent in donning and doffing “clothes” as we have defined that term, the entire period qualifies, and the time spent put

ting on and off other items need not be subtracted. In the present case, the District Court stated that “the time expended by each employee donning and doffing” safety glasses and earplugs “is minimal,” 2009 WL 3430222, *6, a conclusion with which the Seventh Circuit agreed, 678 F. 3d, at 593. As for respirators, the District Court stated that they “are kept and put on as needed at job locations,” 2009 WL 3430222, *2, which would render the time spent donning and doffing them part of an em

ployee’s normal workday and thus beyond the scope of §203( o ). The Seventh Circuit did not address respirators at all, and we are not inclined to disturb the District
Court’s factual conclusion.

* * *
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

It is so ordered.