Opinion ID: $opinion_id
Heading Depth: 1.0
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Text: IBP correctly points out that our decision in Steiner held only that the donning and doffing of protective gear in that case were activities "integral and indispensable" to the workers' principal activity of making batteries. 350 U.S., at 256. In IBP's view, a category of "integral and indispensable" activities that may be compensable because they are not merely preliminary or postliminary within the meaning of § 4(a)(2) is not necessarily coextensive with the actual "principal activities" which the employee "is employed to perform" within the meaning of § 4(a)(1). In other words, IBP argues that, even though the court below concluded that donning and doffing of unique protective gear are "integral and indispensable" to the employees' principal activity, this means only that the donning and doffing of such gear are themselves covered by the FLSA. According to IBP, the donning is not a "principal activity" that starts the workday, and the walking that occurs immediately after donning and immediately before doffing is not compensable. In effect, IBP asks us to create a third category of activities_x0097_those that are "integral and indispensable" to a "principal activity" and thus not excluded from coverage by § 4(a)(2), but that are not themselves "principal activities" as that term is defined by § 4(a)(1).

IBP's submission is foreclosed by Steiner. As noted above, in Steiner we made it clear that § 4 of the Portal-to-Portal Act does not remove activities which are "`integral and indispensable'" to "`principal activities'" from FLSA coverage precisely because such activities are themselves "`principal activities.'" Id., at 253. While Steiner specifically addressed the proper interpretation of the term "principal activity or activities" in § 4(a)(2), there is no plausible argument that these terms mean something different in § 4(a)(2) than they do in § 4(a)(1).[6] This is not only because of the normal rule of statutory interpretation that identical words used in different parts of the same statute are generally presumed to have the same meaning. E. g., Sullivan v. Stroop, 496 U.S. 478, 484 (1990). It is also because § 4(a)(2) refers to "said principal activity or activities." 61 Stat. 87 (emphasis added). The "said" is an explicit reference to the use of the identical term in § 4(a)(1).

Indeed, IBP has not offered any support for the unlikely proposition that Congress intended to create an intermediate category of activities that would be sufficiently "principal" to be compensable, but not sufficiently principal to commence the workday. Accepting the necessary import of our holding in Steiner, we conclude that the locker rooms where the special safety gear is donned and doffed are the relevant "place of performance" of the principal activity that the employee was employed to perform within the meaning of § 4(a)(1). Walking to that place before starting work is excluded from FLSA coverage, but the statutory text does not exclude walking from that place to another area within the plant immediately after the workday has commenced.