Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-309_o758.pdf
Page Number: 11

8 

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO. v. SAXON 

Opinion of the Court 

“class of workers” as all airline employees who carry out the 
“customary work” of the airline, rather than cargo loaders
more specifically.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 56.  That larger class of
employees potentially includes everyone from cargo loaders 
to shift schedulers to those who design Southwest’s website.
See id., at 51–52; but cf. ibid. (conceding that those who run 
the Southwest credit-card points program likely would not
count).

To support this reading, Saxon invokes the ejusdem gen-
eris canon.  She argues, first, that “railroad employees” and 
“seamen”  refer  generally  to  employees  in  those industries 
providing  “dominant  mode[s]  of  transportation”  in  inter-
state and foreign commerce.  Brief for Respondent 17.  She 
then reasons, second, that all “workers who do the work of 
the  airlines  have  the  same  relationship  to  commerce  as 
those who do the work of the railroad or ship.”  Ibid. 

Saxon’s attempted invocation of ejusdem generis is una-
vailing  because  it  proceeds  from  the  flawed  premise  that 
“seamen” and “railroad employees” are both industrywide
categories.  The statute’s use of “seamen” shows why that 
premise is mistaken.  In 1925, seamen did not include all 
those  employed  by  companies  engaged  in  maritime  ship-
ping.  Rather,  seamen were  only  those  “whose  occupation
[was] to assist in the management of ships at sea; a mari-
ner; a sailor; . . . any person (except masters, pilots, and ap-
prentices duly indentured and registered) employed or en-
gaged in any capacity on board any ship.”  Webster’s 1906; 
see  also,  e.g.,  Black’s  1063  (seamen:  “[s]ailors;  mariners;
persons whose business is navigating ships”). 

Because “seamen” includes only those who work on board 
a vessel, they constitute a subset of workers engaged in the
maritime shipping industry.  Regardless of whether “rail-
road  employees”  include  all  rail-transportation  workers, 
the narrow definition of “seamen” shows that the two terms 
cannot share a “common attribute” of identifying transpor-
tation workers on an industrywide basis.  Ali, 552 U. S., at