Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/571/220/
Timestamp: 2020-08-09 03:20:53
Document Index: 121225161

Matched Legal Cases: ['§203', '§203', '§203', '§203', '§203', '§254', '§203', '§203', '§254', '§203', '§203', '§254', '§203', '§203', '§203', '§203', '§213', '§203', '§785']

Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. :: 571 U.S. 220 (2014) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
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Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., 571 U.S. 220 (2014)
Plaintiffs filed a putative collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act, seeking backpay for time spent donning and doffing pieces of protective gear required by the employer because of hazards at its steel plants. The employer argued that the time, otherwise compensable under the Act, is noncompensable under its collective bargaining agreement with plaintiffs’ union. Under 29 U.S.C. 203(o), parties may collectively bargain over whether “time spent in changing clothes ... at the beginning or end of each workday” must be compensated. The district court granted the employer partial summary judgment. The Seventh Circuit and Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that the protective gear constitutes “clothes,” even if integral and indispensable to the work. Whether one exchanges street clothes for work clothes or simply layers one over the other may be a matter of purely personal choice, and section 203(o) should not be read to allow workers to opt into or out of its coverage at random or at will when another reading is textually permissible. Although safety glasses, earplugs, and a respirator do not fit the interpretation of “clothes,” the relevant question is whether the period at issue can, on the whole, be fairly characterized as “time spent in changing clothes or washing.” In this case, time spent donning and doffing safety glasses and earplugs was minimal.
The time workers spent donning and doffing necessary protective gear is not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which requires that workers be paid for time spent "changing clothes."
Petitioner Sandifer and others filed a putative collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, seeking backpay for time spent donning and doffing pieces of protective gear that they assert respondent United States Steel Corporation requires workers to wear because of hazards at its steel plants. U. S. Steel contends that this donning-and-doffing time, which would otherwise be compensable under the Act, is noncompensable under a provision of its collective-bargaining agreement with petitioners’ union. That provision’s validity depends on 29 U. S. C. §203(o), which allows parties to collectively bargain over whether “time spent in changing clothes . . . at the beginning or end of each workday” must be compensated. The District Court granted U. S. Steel summary judgment in pertinent part, holding that petitioners’ donning and doffing constituted “changing clothes” under §203(o). It also assumed that any time spent donning and doffing items that were not “clothes” was “de minimis” and hence noncompensable. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.
(a) This Court initially construed compensability under the Fair Labor Standards Act expansively. See, e.g., Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U. S. 680 . The Act was amended in 1949, however, to provide that the compensability of time spent “changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday” is a subject appropriately committed to collective bargaining, §203(o). Whether petitioners’ donning and doffing qualifies as “changing clothes” depends on the meaning of that statutory phrase. Pp. 3–6.
(b) The term “clothes,” which is otherwise undefined, is “interpreted as taking [its] ordinary, contemporary, common meaning.” Perrin v. United States, 444 U. S. 37 . In dictionaries from the era of §203(o)’s enactment, “clothes” denotes items that are both designed and used to cover the body and are commonly regarded as articles of dress. Nothing in §203(o)’s text or context suggests anything other than this ordinary meaning. There is no basis for petitioners’ proposition that the unmodified term “clothes” somehow omits protective clothing. Section 203(o)’s exception applies only when the changing of clothes is “an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered workmen are employed,” Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U. S. 247 , and thus otherwise compensable under the Act. See 29 U. S. C. §254(a). And protective gear is the only clothing that is integral and indispensable to the work of many occupations, such as butchers and longshoremen. Petitioners’ position is also incompatible with the historical context of §203(o)’s passage, contradicting contemporaneous Labor Department regulations and dictum in Steiner, see 350 U. S., at 248, 254–255. The interpretation adopted here leaves room for distinguishing between clothes and wearable items that are not clothes, such as some equipment and devices. The view of respondent and its amici that “clothes” encompasses the entire outfit that one puts on to be ready for work is also devoid of any textual foundation. Pp. 6–10.
Petitioners point specifically to 12 of what they state are the most common kinds of required protective gear: a flame-retardant jacket, pair of pants, and hood; a hardhat; a “snood”; “wristlets”; work gloves; leggings; “metatarsal” boots; safety glasses; earplugs; and a respirator.[3] At bottom, petitioners want to be paid for the time they have spent putting on and taking off those objects. In the aggregate, the amount of time—and thus money—involved is likely to be quite large. Because this donning-and-doffing time would otherwise be compensable under the Act, U. S. Steel’s contention of noncompensability stands or falls upon the validity of a provision of its collective-bargaining agreement with petitioners’ union, which says that this time is noncompensable.[4] The validity of that provision depends, in turn, upon the applicability of 29 U. S. C. §203(o) to the time at issue. That subsection allows parties to decide, as part of a collective-bargaining agreement, that “time spent in changing clothes . . . at the beginning or end of each workday” is noncompensable.
The Act did not, however, define the key terms “work” and “workweek”—an omission that soon let loose a landslide of litigation. See IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U. S. 21 –26 (2005). This Court gave those terms a broad reading, culminating in its holding in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U. S. 680 (1946) , that “the statutory workweek includes all time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer’s premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace.” Id., at 690–691. That period, Anderson explained, encompassed time spent “pursu[ing] certain preliminary activities after arriving . . . , such as putting on aprons and overalls [and] removing shirts.” Id., at 692–693. “These activities,” the Court declared, “are clearly work” under the Act. Id., at 693.
“activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to [the] principal activity or activities [that an employee is employed to perform], which occur either prior to the time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he ceases, such principal activity or activities.” 61Stat. 87, 29 U. S. C. §254(a)(2).
“Hours Worked.—In determining for the purposes of [the minimum-wage and maximum-hours sections] of this title the hours for which an employee is employed, there shall be excluded any time spent in changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday which was excluded from measured working time during the week involved by the express terms of or by custom or practice under a bona fide collective-bargaining agreement applicable to the particular employee.” 63Stat. 911, 29 U. S. C. §203(o).
In Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U. S. 247 (1956) , the Court echoed the Labor Department’s 1947 regulations by holding that “changing clothes and showering” can, under some circumstances, be considered “an integral and indispensable 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.
We begin by examining the meaning of the word “clothes.”[6] It is a “fundamental canon of statutory construction” that, “unless otherwise defined, words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common 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 Dictionary of the English Language 507 (2d ed. 1950) (Webster’s Second) (defining “clothes” as “[c]overing for the human body; dress; vestments; vesture”); see also, e.g., 2 Oxford English Dictionary 524 (1933) (defining “clothes” as “[c]overing for the person; wearing apparel; dress, raiment, vesture”). That is what we hold to be the meaning of the word as used in §203(o). Although a statute may make “a departure from the natural and popular acceptation of language,” Greenleaf v. Goodrich, 101 U. S. 278 –285 (1880) (citing Maillard v. Lawrence, 16 How. 251 (1854)), nothing in the text or context of §203(o) suggests anything other than the ordinary meaning of “clothes.”
1 * joins this opinion except as to footnote 7.
2 Petitioners filed this action under , which establishes a cause of action that may be maintained “by any one or more employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves and other employees similarly situated.” Pending resolution of the instant summary-judgment dispute, a Magistrate Judge set aside a motion to certify the suit as a collective action, see No. 2:07–CV–443 RM, 2009 WL 3430222, *1, n. 1 (ND Ind., Oct. 15, 2009), but petitioners assert that their ranks are about 800 strong.
5 Petitioners also sought, , backpay for time spent traveling between the locker rooms where they don and doff at least some of the protective gear and their workstations. The District Court denied that portion of respondent’s motion for summary judgment, 2009 WL 3430222, *11, and the Seventh Circuit reversed, 678 F. 3d, at 595–598. That issue is not before this Court, so we express no opinion on it.
6 Although the Labor Department has construed §203() 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.
7 Petitioners and their insist that equipment can never be clothes. While we do not believe that every wearable piece of equipment qualifies—for example, a wristwatch—our construction of “clothes” does not exclude all objects that could conceivably be characterized as equipment.
8 This Court has stated that “exemptions” in the Fair Labor Standards Act “are to be narrowly construed against the employers seeking to assert them.” v. , . We need not disapprove that statement to resolve the present case. The exemptions from the Act generally reside in §213, which is entitled “Exemptions” and classifies certain kinds of workers as uncovered by various provisions. Thus, in v. , 567 U. S. ___, ___–___, n. 21 (2012) (slip op., at 19–20, n. 21), we declared the narrow-construction principle inapplicable to a provision appearing in §203, entitled “Definitions.”
9 We note, moreover, that even in that context, the current regulations of the Labor Department apply a stricter standard than expressed. They specify that “[a]n employer may not arbitrarily fail to count as hours worked any part, however small, of the employee’s fixed or regular working time or practically ascertainable period of time he is regularly required to spend on duties assigned to him.” 29 CFR §785.47.
Clifton Sandifer, et al.
571 U.S. 220