(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2013 1 

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 protective gear that they assert respondent United States Steel Corporation 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 collectivebargaining agreement with petitioners’ union. That provision’s validity depends on 29 U. S. C. §203(o), which allows parties to collectively 

bargain over whether “time spent in changing clothes . . . at the beginning or end of each workday” must be compensated. The District 

Court granted U. S. Steel summary judgment in pertinent part, holding 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 donning and doffing their protective 

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

(a) This Court initially construed 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 appropriately committed to collective bargaining, §203(o). Whether petitioners’ 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 “interpreted as taking [its] ordinary, contemporary, common meaning.” Perrin 
 

 

 

2 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’ proposition 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 indispensable part of the principal activities 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 the work of many occupations, such 

as butchers and longshoremen. Petitioners’ position is also incompatible with the historical context of §203(o)’s passage, contradicting 

contemporaneous Labor Department regulations and dictum in Steiner, 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 outfit 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 substitution, “changing” also carried the meaning to “alter” at the time of

§203(o)’s enactment. The broader statutory context makes plain that 

“time spent in changing clothes” includes time spent in altering 

dress. Whether one exchanges street clothes for work clothes or

simply chooses to layer one over the 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 respirator—do not fit within the elaborated interpretation of “clothes.”

Apparently concerned that federal judges would have to separate the

minutes spent clothes-changing and washing from the minutes devoted 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 comfortably within this statute, which is all about trifles. A more appropriate 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 equipment or other non-clothes items, the 
 

Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014) 3 

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 doffing safety glasses and earplugs 

was minimal. And this Court is disinclined to disturb the District 

Court’s additional factual finding, not addressed by the Seventh Circuit, that the respirators were donned and doffed as needed during 

the normal workday and thus fell beyond §203(o)’s scope. Pp. 12–15. 

678 F. 3d 590, affirmed. 

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, 

C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, GINSBURG, BREYER, ALITO, and KAGAN,
 

JJ., joined, and in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined except as to footnote 7. 
 

 

_________________ 

_________________ 

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

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, Washington, 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]

 JUSTICE SCALIA 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 Standards 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 

—————— 

* JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR joins this opinion except as to footnote 7. 1Petitioners filed this action under 29 U. S. C. §216(b), which establishes a cause of action that may be maintained “by any one or more

employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves and other employees similarly situated.” Pending resolution of the instant summaryjudgment 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 backpay 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 bottom, petitioners want to be paid for the time they have 

spent putting on and taking off those objects. In the aggregate, 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 parties 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 pertinent part to U. S. Steel, holding that donning and doffing 

—————— 

2The 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 provides a photograph of a male model 

wearing the jacket, pants, hardhat, snood, gloves, boots, and glasses.

678 F. 3d, at 593. 3The District Court concluded that the collective-bargaining agreement 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. 
 

Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

the protective gear constituted “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 commerce 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 landslide of litigation. See IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U. S. 21, 

25–26 (2005). This Court gave those terms a broad reading, culminating in its holding in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens 

Pottery Co., 328 U. S. 680 (1946), that “the statutory 

—————— 

4Petitioners 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 preliminary activities after arriving

. . . , such as putting on aprons and overalls [and] removing 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 construction of compensability by filing what became known

as “portal” actions (a reference to the “portals” or entrances 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 longestablished customs, practices, 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 which he ceases, such principal 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-Portal Act did not alter what 

is known as the “continuous workday rule,” under which

compensable time comprises “the period between the 
Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014) 5 

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 showering” “would be considered ‘preliminary’ or ‘postliminary’ 

activities” when “performed outside the workday and . . . 

under the conditions normally present,” those same activities “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 employee’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 discussed 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 employed, 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 particular employee.” 63 Stat. 911, 29 U. S. C. §203(o). 

Simply put, the statute provides 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 holding that “changing clothes and showering” can, under 
 

6 SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP. 

Opinion of the Court 

some circumstances, be considered “an integral and indispensable 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 somewhat 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, however, quarrel with the premise, arguing that the donning 

and doffing of protective gear does not qualify as “changing clothes.” 

III. Analysis

A. “Clothes” 

We begin by examining the meaning of the word

“clothes.”5 It is a “fundamental canon of statutory construction” that, “unless otherwise defined, words will be 

interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common 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 Dictionary of the English Language 507 (2d ed. 1950) (Webster’s Second) (defining “clothes” as “[c]overing for the 

—————— 

5Although 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 have vacillated considerably over the 

years. 
 

 

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

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 meaning 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) suggests anything other than the ordinary meaning of

“clothes.” 

Petitioners argue that the word “clothes” is too indeterminate to be ascribed any general meaning but that, 

whatever it includes, it necessarily excludes items designed 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 elaborates that “clothes” is “a 

general term for whatever covering 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 implicitly, items with a protective 

function, since “protection” and “comfort” are not incompatible, 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, enhancing the comfort of the wearer. Petitioners further assert 

that protective items of apparel are referred to as “clothing” rather than “clothes.” They point out that, when

introduced by the adjective “protective,” the noun “clothing” is used more commonly than “clothes.” That is true 

enough, but it seems to us explained by euphonic preference 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 distinction, 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 for 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 function, but that limitation essentially abandons the assertion that clothes are for decency or comfort, leaving no 

basis whatever for the distinction. 

Petitioners’ position is also incompatible with the historical context surrounding §203(o)’s passage, since it flatly

contradicts an illustration provided by the Labor Department’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 situation 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-
 

 

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Opinion of the Court 

ers “ma[d]e extensive use of dangerously caustic and toxic 

materials, and [we]re compelled by circumstances, including 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 definition 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 claim 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 wearable items that are not clothes, such as some equipment 

and devices.6 

Respondent and its amici, by contrast, give the term in 

—————— 

6Petitioners and their amici insist that equipment can never be 

clothes. While we do not believe that every wearable piece of equipment qualifies—for example, a wristwatch—our construction of 

“clothes” does not exclude all objects that could conceivably be characterized 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 interpretation 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 certain 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 meaning 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 make 
 

 

 

Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014) 11 

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 achieved through mutually 

beneficial negotiation. There can be little predictability, 

and hence little meaningful negotiation, if “changing” 

means only “substituting.” Whether one actually exchanges 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 employee 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 something 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 

—————— 

7This Court has stated that “exemptions” in the Fair Labor Standards 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 statement 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) (slip op., at 19–20, n. 21), we declared the narrow-construction principle 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 flameretardant 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 interpretation 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 shirtsleeves. The leggings look much like traditional legwarmers, 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 activities 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, they 
 

Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014) 13 

Opinion of the Court 

hold, enables them to declare noncompensable a few

minutes actually spent on something other than clotheschanging—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 actualities 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 relatively 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 

—————— 

8We note, moreover, that even in that context, the current regulations of the Labor Department apply a stricter de minimis standard 

than Anderson expressed. They specify that “[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 required 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 perception 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 consequence of dispensing with the intricate exercise of separating 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 inconsequential judicial involvement in “a morass of difficult, factspecific 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 activities involved: “activities which are preliminary to or

postliminary to [the employee’s] principal activity or activities.” §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 lessthan-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 preponderance of the period in question is devoted to those

activities. To be sure, such an imprecise and colloquial 

usage will not ordinarily be attributed to a statutory text,

but for the reasons we have discussed we think that appropriate 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 employee devotes the vast majority of the time in question to 

putting on and off equipment or other non-clothes items 
 

Cite as: 571 U. S. ____ (2014) 15 

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 putting 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 employee’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.