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6 

SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP. 

Opinion of the Court 

some circumstances, be considered “an integral and indis-
pensable 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, how-
ever,  quarrel  with  the  premise,  arguing  that  the  donning 
and  doffing  of  protective  gear  does  not  qualify  as  “chang-
ing clothes.” 

III. Analysis
A. “Clothes” 
We  begin  by  examining  the  meaning  of  the  word
“clothes.”5  It  is  a  “fundamental  canon  of  statutory  con-
struction”  that,  “unless  otherwise  defined,  words  will  be 
interpreted  as  taking  their  ordinary,  contemporary,  com-
mon  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  Dic-
tionary  of  the  English  Language  507  (2d  ed.  1950)  (Web-
ster’s  Second)  (defining  “clothes”  as  “[c]overing  for  the 
—————— 

5 Although 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.