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Page Number: 13

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 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 make