Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 658

529US2

Unit: $U53

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

583

Opinion of the Court

of workplace operations, implies that all other methods of
spending compensatory time are precluded.4

We ﬁnd this reading unpersuasive. We accept the propo-
sition that “[w]hen a statute limits a thing to be done in a
particular mode, it includes a negative of any other mode.”
Raleigh & Gaston R. Co. v. Reid, 13 Wall. 269, 270 (1872).
But that canon does not resolve this case in petitioners’
favor. The “thing to be done” as deﬁned by § 207(o)(5) is
not the expenditure of compensatory time, as petitioners
would have it.
Instead, § 207(o)(5) is more properly read as
a minimal guarantee that an employee will be able to make
some use of compensatory time when he requests to use it.
As such, the proper expressio unius inference is that an em-
ployer may not, at least in the absence of an agreement, deny
an employee’s request to use compensatory time for a reason
other than that provided in § 207(o)(5). The canon’s applica-
tion simply does not prohibit an employer from telling an
employee to take the beneﬁts of compensatory time by
scheduling time off work with full pay.

In other words, viewed in the context of the overall statu-
tory scheme, § 207(o)(5) is better read not as setting forth
the exclusive method by which compensatory time can be
used, but as setting up a safeguard to ensure that an em-

4 Justice Stevens asserts that the parties never make this argument.
See post, at 593, n. 1 (dissenting opinion). Although the United States
and petitioners fail to make their arguments in Latin, we believe a fair
reading of the briefs reveals reliance upon the expressio unius canon.
See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 16 (“Congress . . . iden-
tiﬁed only one circumstance in which an employer may exercise some
measure of control: when an employee requests the use of compensatory
time, the employer must allow such use within a reasonable period of time
except where the use would ‘unduly disrupt’ the employer’s operations.
If Congress had intended for employers to exercise
29 U. S. C. 207(o)(5).
unilateral control over the use of compensatory time in other respects as
well, it presumably would have so provided”); Reply Brief for Petitioners
4–6 (contending that the FLSA explicitly provides methods for reducing
compensatory time and thus other means may not be used).