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529US2

Unit: $U53

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CHRISTENSEN v. HARRIS COUNTY

Opinion of the Court

merely involves doing both of these steps at once.
It would
make little sense to interpret § 207(o)(5) to make the combi-
nation of the two steps unlawful when each independently
is lawful.5

III

In an attempt to avoid the conclusion that the FLSA does
not prohibit compelled use of compensatory time, petitioners
and the United States contend that we should defer to the
Department of Labor’s opinion letter, which takes the posi-
tion that an employer may compel the use of compensatory
time only if the employee has agreed in advance to such a
practice. Speciﬁcally, they argue that the agency opinion
letter is entitled to deference under our decision in Chevron
U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467
In Chevron, we held that a court must give
U. S. 837 (1984).

5 Justice Stevens does not dispute this argument.

In fact, he ex-
pressly endorses half of it. See post, at 594, 595 (employer free to cash
Instead, Justice Stevens claims that we
out compensatory time).
“stumbl[e]” by failing to identify “the relevant general rule” that employ-
ees have “a statutory right to compensation for overtime work payable in
cash.” Post, at 592. We fail to do so only because the general rule is not
relevant to this case. Both parties to this case agreed that compensatory
time would be provided in lieu of cash and thus § 207(a)’s general require-
ment of cash compensation is supplanted. Petitioners and the United
States do assert that the requirement of cash compensation is relevant by
analogy. They claim that an employer cannot compel compensatory time
use because compensatory time should be treated like employee cash in
the bank—that is, under the exclusive control of the employee. But this
analogy is wholly inapt under the very terms of the FLSA. The FLSA
grants signiﬁcant control to the employer over accrued compensatory
time. For example, the employer is free to buy out compensatory time
at any time by providing cash compensation. § 207(o)(3)(B); 29 CFR
§ 553.27(a) (1999). Additionally, an employer is free to deny any request
to use compensatory time when such use would unduly disrupt the em-
ployer’s operations.
§ 207(o)(5)(B); 29 CFR § 553.25(d) (1999). The cash
analogy is therefore directly undermined by unambiguous provisions of
the statute.