Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-309_o758.pdf
Page Number: 12.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

9 

Opinion of the Court 

224.  We therefore reject Saxon’s argument that §1 exempts
virtually all employees of major transportation providers. 

B 

While  Saxon  defines  the  relevant  class  of  workers  too 
broadly, Southwest construes §1’s catchall category—“any
other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate com-
merce”—too narrowly.  The airline argues that only work-
ers who physically move goods or people across foreign or 
international  boundaries—pilots,  ship  crews,  locomotive 
engineers,  and  the  like—are  “engaged  in  foreign  or  inter-
state commerce.”  So construed, §1 does not exempt cargo
loaders  because  they  do  not  physically  accompany  freight 
across state or international boundaries. 

Southwest’s reading rests on three arguments.  None per-
suades us.  First, taking its turn with ejusdem generis, the 
airline  argues  that  because  “seamen”  are  “employed  on 
board a vessel,” McDermott Int’l, Inc. v. Wilander, 498 U. S. 
337, 346 (1991) (emphasis added), and “ ‘railroad employees’ 
is somewhat ambiguous,” Brief for Petitioner 26, we should
limit the exempted class of railroad employees to those who
are physically on board a locomotive as it crosses state lines. 
Then,  having  limited  railroad  employees  in  that  way,
Southwest likewise urges us to narrow §1’s catchall provi-
sion  to  exclude  those  airline-transportation  workers,  like 
Saxon and other cargo loaders, who do not ride aboard an
airplane in interstate or foreign transit. 

Southwest’s application of ejusdem generis is as flawed as 
Saxon’s.  It purports to import a limitation from the defini-
tion of “seamen” into the definition of “railroad employees” 
and  then  engrafts  that  limit  onto  the  catchall  provision.
But by conceding that “railroad employees” is ambiguous, 
Southwest sinks its own ejusdem generis argument.  Again, 
the  “inference  embodied  in  ejusdem  generis  [is]  that  Con-
gress  remained  focused  on  [some]  common  attribute”
shared by the preceding list of specific items “when it used