Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp.

• Decision Date: 27 January 2014
• Docket Number: No. 12–417.,12–417.
• Citation: 187 L.Ed.2d 729,571 U.S. 220,134 S.Ct. 870
• Parties: Clifton SANDIFER, et al., Petitioners v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

571 U.S. 220

134 S.Ct. 870

187 L.Ed.2d 729

Clifton SANDIFER, et al., Petitioners

v.UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION.

No. 12–417.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Nov. 4, 2013.

Decided Jan. 27, 2014.

Eric Schnapper, Seattle, WA, for Petitioners.

Lawrence C. DiNardo, Chicago, IL, for Respondent.

Anthony A. Yang, for the United States, as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Respondent.

Eric Schnapper, Counsel of Record, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, WA, Aaron B. Maduff, Michael L. Maduff, Walker R. Lawrence, Maduff & Maduff, LLC, Chicago, IL, Robert F. Childs, Jr., Abby Morrow Richardson, Wiggins, Childs, Quinn & Pantazis, LLC, Birmingham, AL, David L. Kern, Kern Law Firm, El Paso, TX, for Petitioners.

J. Michael Jarboe, The Law Department of United States Steel Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, Amy E. Dias, Warren D. Postman, Jones Day, Washington, D.C., Lawrence C. DiNardo, Counsel of Record, Brian J. Murray, Jones Day, Chicago, IL, Brian M. Jorgensen, Jones Day, Dallas, TX, for Respondent.

Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.^**

The question before us is the meaning of the phrase "changing clothes" as it appears in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. (2006 ed. and Supp. V).

I. Facts and Procedural History

Petitioner Clifton Sandifer, among others, filed suit under the Fair Labor Standards Act against respondent United States Steel Corporation in the District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. The plaintiffs in this putative collective action are a group of current or former employees of respondent's steelmaking facilities.¹ As relevant here, they seek backpay for time spent donning and doffing various pieces of protective gear. Petitioners assert that respondent requires workers to wear all of the items because of hazards regularly encountered in steel plants.

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.² 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.³ 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 District Court granted summary judgment in pertinent part to U.S. Steel, holding that donning and doffing the protective gear constituted "changing clothes" within the meaning of § 203(o ). No. 2:07–CV–443 RM, 2009 WL 3430222, *4–*10 (N.D.Ind., Oct. 15, 2009). The District Court further assumed that even if certain items—the hardhat, glasses, and earplugs—were not "clothes," the time spent donning and doffing them was "de minimis " and hence noncompensable. Id., at *6. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld those conclusions. 678 F.3d 590, 593–595 (2012).⁴

We granted certiorari, 568 U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 1240, 185 L.Ed.2d 177 (2013), and now affirm.

II. Legal Background

The Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, governs minimum wages and maximum hours for non-exempt "employees who in any workweek [are] engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or [are] employed in an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce." 29 U.S.C. § 206(a) (minimum wages); § 207(a) (maximum hours); see § 213 (exemptions). The Act provides that "employee" generally means "any individual employed by an employer," § 203(e)(1), and, in turn, provides that to "employ" is "to suffer or permit to work," § 203(g).

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, 25–26, 126 S.Ct. 514, 163 L.Ed.2d 288 (2005). This Court gave those terms a broad reading, culminating in its holding in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 66 S.Ct. 1187, 90 L.Ed. 1515 (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, 66 S.Ct. 1187. 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, 66 S.Ct. 1187."These activities," the Court declared, "are clearly work" under the Act. Id., at 693, 66 S.Ct. 1187.

Organized labor seized on the Court's expansive construction of compensability by filing what became known as "portal" actions (a reference to the "portals" or entrances to mines, at which workers put on their gear). "PORTAL PAY SUITS EXCEED A BILLION," announced a newspaper headline in late 1946. N.Y. Times, Dec. 29, 1946, p. 1. Stating that the Fair Labor Standards Act had been "interpreted judicially in disregard of long-established customs, practices, and contracts between employers and employees," Congress responded by passing the Portal–to–Portal Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 84, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 251 et seq. (2006 ed. and Supp. V). § 251(a).

The Portal–to–Portal Act limited the scope of employers' liability in various ways. As relevant here, it excluded from mandatorily compensable time

"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." 61 Stat. 87, 29 U.S.C. § 254(a)(2).

The Department of Labor promulgated a regulation explaining that the Portal–to–Portal Act did not alter what is known as the "continuous workday rule," under which compensable time comprises "the period between the commencement and completion on the same workday of an employee's principal activity or activities ...[,] whether or not the employee engages in work throughout all of that period." 12 Fed.Reg. 7658 (1947) ; 29 CFR § 790. 6(b) (2013). Of particular importance to this case, a Labor Department interpretive bulletin also specified that whereas "changing clothes" and "washing up or showering" "would be considered 'preliminary' or 'postliminary' activities" when "performed outside the workday and ... under the conditions normally present," those same activities "may in certain situations be so directly related to the specific work the employee is employed to perform that [they] would be regarded as an integral part of the employee's 'principal activity.' " 12 Fed.Reg. 7659, and n. 49; 29 CFR § 790.7, and n. 49.

In 1949, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to address the conduct discussed in that interpretive bulletin—changing clothes and washing—by adding the provision presently at issue:

"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." 63 Stat. 911, 29 U.S.C. § 203(o ).

Simply put, the statute provides that the compensability of time spent changing clothes or washing is a subject appropriately committed to collective bargaining.

In Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 76 S.Ct. 330, 100 L.Ed. 267 (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, 76 S.Ct. 330. 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, 126 S.Ct. 514. 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, 126 S.Ct. 514.

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, however, quarrel with the premise, arguing that the donning and doffing of protective gear does not qualify as "changing clothes."

III. Analysis

A. "Clothes"

We begin by examining the meaning of the word "clothes."⁵ 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, 100 S.Ct. 311, 62 L.Ed.2d 199 (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...