In the 1976 case Local 3489, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. Usery, Secretary of Labor, the U.S Supreme Court ruled on whether a federal regulation requiring employers to provide protective equipment and clothing for their employees was valid under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). The steel industry argued that they were not required to do so because it fell under "personal protective equipment," which they believed was excluded from OSHA's regulations. However, the court disagreed with this interpretation. It held that OSHA had broad authority to issue any regulations necessary for employee safety and health unless explicitly prohibited by Congress. Therefore, it upheld OSHA's requirement for employers in hazardous industries like steelmaking to provide personal protective gear at no cost to workers.

In the dissenting opinion for Local 3489, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. Usery, Secretary of Labor (1976), Justice William J. Brennan Jr., joined by Justices Thurgood Marshall and Potter Stewart, disagreed with the majority's interpretation that Section 103(a) of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act required a mandatory penalty assessment for all violations without considering their gravity or negligence involved. The dissent argued that this reading was inconsistent with Congress' intent to create a flexible enforcement scheme where penalties would be determined based on each violation's severity and operator’s negligence level. They believed that such an inflexible approach could lead to unjust results in cases where minor infractions were committed unknowingly or unintentionally by mine operators who generally complied with safety standards but inadvertently violated some regulations due to complex nature of mining operations.