Ejusdem Generis Meaning: How Courts Apply It in Statutes and Contracts

Ejusdem generis is a Latin phrase meaning “of the same kind,” and in law it names an interpretive rule courts use when a statute or contract lists specific items followed by a broad catch-all phrase. The rule limits that catch-all to things sharing the same nature as the specific items in front of it. If a statute reads “automobiles, trucks, tractors, motorcycles, and other motor-powered vehicles,” a court applying the rule would likely exclude airplanes, because every listed item is land-based transportation. The doctrine appears constantly in both statutory interpretation and contract disputes, and it explains why broad legal language often means less than it seems to on first reading.

The Logic Behind the Rule

The reasoning is simple. When a drafter lists specific things and then adds a general phrase such as “and other similar items” or “or any other,” the general phrase is read to cover only things in the same category as the specific ones. The assumption is that a drafter who wanted the general term to be truly unlimited would not have bothered listing specifics first. Those specifics signal what the drafter had in mind, and the catch-all picks up stragglers from the same family rather than opening the door to anything imaginable.

This keeps a single vague phrase from swallowing the rest of the text. Without the rule, a catch-all could render every specific term before it pointless. Courts treat the listed items as evidence of intent and read the general language through that lens, which produces a narrower and more predictable meaning than the general words would carry on their own.

When the Rule Applies

Not every list followed by broad language triggers ejusdem generis. Courts have declined to apply it when the text lacks the structure the canon assumes.

Multiple specific items. The canon generally requires at least two specific terms to establish a recognizable class. In Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Supreme Court refused to apply ejusdem generis to the phrase “any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer” because the text contained “one specific and one general category” rather than a list of items sharing an identifiable trait.¹
A shared class. The specific items must belong to a recognizable category, often called the “genus.” If the listed items are too different from one another, there is no common thread to limit the general term. The Ali Court noted it was “not apparent what common attribute connects” customs officers and excise officers in a way that would meaningfully narrow the catch-all.¹
A general term following the specifics. The broad language needs to come after the list. A standalone general term with no preceding specifics gives the canon nothing to work with.

The Genus Problem

The hardest part in practice is deciding what class the specifics define. Take a list like “lions, tigers, and cheetahs, and other animals.” The shared class could be big cats, predatory mammals, African wildlife, or dangerous animals, depending on which trait you emphasize. Two reasonable readers can look at the same list and disagree about what category unites the items. That flexibility is where most real arguments happen, and it means the rule doesn’t always produce a single clear answer.

How Courts Apply It to Statutes

Ejusdem generis shows up most often when courts interpret legislation. The reasoning is that a legislature chose specific words deliberately, and a broad residual clause shouldn’t be read to erase that deliberate choice. Two Supreme Court decisions show how the analysis plays out.

Circuit City v. Adams (2001)

Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act exempts “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” The question was whether “any other class of workers” reached all employees or only transportation workers similar to seamen and railroad employees. Applying ejusdem generis, the Court held that the residual clause covers only transportation workers. Reading it to exclude all employment contracts would make the specific references to seamen and railroad employees pointless, because those groups would already fall under the broader language.²

Fischer v. United States (2024)

In a more recent case, the Court interpreted 18 U.S.C. §1512(c), which makes it a crime to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal a record, document, or other object” with intent to impair its use in an official proceeding (subsection c(1)), or to “otherwise obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding” (subsection c(2)). Prosecutors argued the “otherwise” clause was a standalone, sweeping prohibition. The Court disagreed, applying ejusdem generis together with the related canon noscitur a sociis, and held that the broad “otherwise” language in c(2) is tethered to the specific evidence-tampering conduct described in c(1).³

The Court captured the common-sense foundation of the rule: “Congress would not ordinarily introduce a general term that renders meaningless the specific text that accompanies it.” That intuition drives the canon across nearly every application.³

How the Rule Works in Contracts

Ejusdem generis also decides contract disputes. Parties draft agreements with catch-all language to cover situations they didn’t anticipate, and those catch-alls can become battlegrounds when something unexpected happens and one side tries to stretch the language.

Force majeure clauses are the classic example. A commercial lease might excuse performance for “fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane, or other events beyond the parties’ control.” Every listed event is a natural disaster, so the shared class is arguably limited to natural catastrophes. When COVID-19 disrupted commerce, parties across the country argued over whether a pandemic fit within force majeure clauses like these. Some courts held that ejusdem generis limited the catch-all to events resembling the natural disasters on the list. Others found the canon inapplicable where the clause used phrases such as “without limitation,” treating the listed events as examples rather than a restrictive class.

The practical lesson for anyone drafting or reviewing a contract is that the specific items listed before a catch-all shape the meaning of that catch-all. Listing only natural events and then writing “or any other cause” invites a court to exclude human-caused disruptions such as labor strikes or government shutdowns. Drafters who want genuinely broad protection need to include items from different categories or explicitly state that the list is non-exhaustive.

Related Canons You Might Confuse With It

Ejusdem generis doesn’t operate in isolation. It sits within a family of text-based interpretive tools, and courts sometimes apply several together. Two neighbors are worth distinguishing.

Noscitur a Sociis

This canon, meaning “known by its associates,” holds that a word draws meaning from the words around it. It’s broader than ejusdem generis and doesn’t require the specific-items-then-catch-all structure. Noscitur a sociis applies whenever surrounding context helps clarify an ambiguous term, even in a flat list of equally general words. Ejusdem generis is essentially a specialized version that kicks in when a general term follows an enumeration of specifics. The Supreme Court in Fischer applied both together, treating them as complementary tools that pointed toward the same narrower reading.³

Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius

This canon works differently. It says that including certain items in a list implies the exclusion of items not mentioned. Where ejusdem generis narrows a catch-all to the same kind of thing, expressio unius asks whether the absence of something from a list means it was deliberately left out. Courts tend to apply expressio unius more readily to statutes than to contracts, partly because legislative drafting involves formal procedures where inclusions and omissions are more likely intentional. In contracts, where parties draft quickly and imperfectly, ejusdem generis tends to be a better fit for approximating what the parties actually meant.

When the Rule Fails

Ejusdem generis is a presumption, not a command. Courts treat it as a starting point that can be overridden when other evidence of meaning is stronger. The main situations where it breaks down:

Clear intent to the contrary. When legislative history or the text itself shows the drafter wanted the general term read broadly, the canon gives way. Some provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, for example, carry legislative history that “negates the applicability of ejusdem generis” even though the text has the classic list-plus-catch-all structure.
Too few specific items. As Ali showed, a single specific term followed by a general one is typically not enough to trigger the canon. Without multiple items establishing a pattern, there is no reliable genus to limit the catch-all.¹
No identifiable common class. If the specific items are too varied to share a meaningful category, the rule can’t function. A list of “apples, screwdrivers, and rainstorms” points to no genus that would usefully narrow a catch-all.
The specifics exhaust the class. When every member of the obvious category is already listed, the general term must mean something beyond that category or it would be pure surplusage. Applying the canon in that setting would leave the catch-all nothing to do.
Explicit anti-limitation language. Contract clauses using phrases like “including but not limited to” or “without limitation” can defeat the canon by signaling that the listed items are examples, not boundaries.

Critics describe the doctrine as malleable, because defining the shared class often requires a court to emphasize one characteristic of the listed items over another. A list of “cars, trucks, and motorcycles” could define a genus of motor vehicles, land-based transportation, or personally owned conveyances, and the choice determines what the catch-all covers. The canon also collides with other interpretive rules. The canon against surplusage, for instance, may demand a broader reading of a catch-all to keep it meaningful, while ejusdem generis demands a narrower one. When canons conflict, the outcome depends on which one a court finds more persuasive in context, which is why experienced lawyers rarely stake an argument on a single interpretive rule.

1
Justia. Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214 (2008)
2
Legal Information Institute. Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams (2001)
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Fischer v. United States, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)