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IBP, INC. v. ALVAREZ Opinion of the Court

Court found that, under its view of what was covered by the FLSA, processing division knife users were entitled to compensation for between 12 and 14 minutes of preproduc­ tion and postproduction work, including 3.3 to 4.4 minutes of walking time. The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court’s ul­ timate conclusions on these issues, but in part for different reasons. 339 F. 3d 894 (CA9 2003). After noting that the question whether activities “ ‘are an integral and indispensa­ ble part of the principal activities’ ” within the meaning of Steiner is “context speciﬁc,” 339 F. 3d, at 902, the Court of Appeals endorsed the distinction between the burdensome donning and dofﬁng of elaborate protective gear, on the one hand, and the time spent donning and dofﬁng nonunique gear such as hardhats and safety goggles, on the other. It did so not because donning and dofﬁng nonunique gear are categor­ ically excluded from being “principal activities” as deﬁned by the Portal-to-Portal Act, but rather because, in the con­ text of this case, the time employees spent donning and dofﬁng nonunique protective gear was “ ‘de minimis as a matter of law.’ ” Id., at 904. IBP does not challenge the holding below that, in light of Steiner, the donning and dofﬁng of unique protective gear are “principal activities” under § 4 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. Moreover, IBP has not asked us to overrule Steiner. Considerations of stare decisis are particularly forceful in the area of statutory construction, especially when a unanimous interpretation of a statute has been accepted as settled law for several decades. Thus, the only question for us to decide is whether the Court of Appeals correctly rejected IBP’s contention that the walking between the locker rooms and the production areas is excluded from FLSA coverage by § 4(a)(1) of the Portal-to-Portal Act. IBP argues that the text of § 4(a)(1), the history and pur­ pose of its enactment, and the Department of Labor’s inter­ pretive guidance compel the conclusion that the Portal-to­