Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 668.0

529US2

Unit: $U53

[09-26-01 10:37:28] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 576 (2000)

593

Stevens, J., dissenting

of noncash compensation may be imposed on those employees
without their consent. Because their consent is a condition
without which the employer cannot qualify for the exception
from the general rule, it seems clear to me that their agree-
ment must encompass the way in which the compensatory
time may be used.

In an effort to avoid addressing this basic point, the Court
mistakenly characterizes petitioners’ central argument as
turning upon the canon expressio unius est exclusio alter-
ius.1 According to the Court, petitioners and the United
States as amicus curiae contend that because employees are
granted the power under the Act to use their compensatory
time subject solely to the employers’ ability to make employ-
ees wait a “reasonable time” before using it, “all other meth-
ods of spending compensatory time are precluded.” Ante,
at 583. The Court concludes that expressio unius does not
help petitioners because the “thing to be done” as prescribed
by the statute (and because of which all other “things” are
excluded) is simply a guarantee that employees will be al-
lowed to make some use of compensatory time upon request,
rather than an open-ended promise that employees will be
able to choose (subject only to the “reasonable time” limita-
tion) how to spend it.

Ibid.

This description of the debate misses the primary thrust
of petitioners’ position. They do not, as the Court implies,
contend that employers generally must afford employees es-
sentially unlimited use of accrued comp time under the stat-
ute; the point is rather that rules regarding both the avail-

1 It must be noted that neither petitioners’ brief nor the brief for the
United States as amicus curiae actually relies upon this canon.
Indeed,
the sole mention of it in either brief is in petitioners’ statement of the
case, in which petitioners refer in a single sentence to an argument made
by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Heaton v. Moore, 43
F. 3d 1176 (1994) (rejecting compelled-use policy absent agreement to that
effect), cert. denied sub nom. Schriro v. Heaton, 515 U. S. 1104 (1995).