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Entire Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to Rehear Challenge to Alabama's Minimum Wage Act


Recently, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to undertake a full court review of a 2015 Alabama law which prohibits cities or local municipalities in the state from adopting their own laws in regard to minimum wages, leave benefits, collective bargaining, and other employment related matters.  

In order to follow how this case came about, let us start at the beginning.  The Birmingham City Council passed a resolution in 2015 that called on the Alabama Legislature to raise the state's hourly minimum wage rate up to about $10/hour.  After the Legislature declined to do so, the Birmingham City Council passed a local ordinance to increase the minimum wage rates for all hourly workers within the City's boundaries.  The Birmingham local ordinance sought to raise the hourly wage rate from $7.25/hour (the statewide and federal hourly wage rate) up to $10.10/hour.  However, the Alabama Legislature quickly sought to preempt this (and other related) local laws and passed the Minimum Wage Act which mandated that the state's minimum wage rate be set at $7.25/hour with no local ordinances being allowed to set local wage rates above that rate.

A lawsuit was filed soon thereafter that alleged Alabama's statewide law was unlawful as it discriminated against minorities.  After the case was dismissed by a federal district judge in 2017, a three panel judge from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling last year that found that while the lawsuit did not establish a valid 13th or 15th Amendment or Voting Rights Act causes of action lawsuit, a plausible 14th Amendment claim had been plead.  The three member panel noted that the Minimum Wage Act denied 37% of Birmingham's black wage earners a higher wage rate compared to only 27% of white workers.  As a result, it was plausible to find that the Minimum Wage Act bore heavily on black hourly workers and that a valid claim had been established that the legislative vote had been "rushed, reactionary, and racially polarized."  

That victory was short lived as the decision was recently vacated with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals announcing that the entire Court, all twelve justices, would weigh in on the case this time.  (The Eleventh Circuit's announcement that it would grant a rehearing on the matter vacated the previous decision.)

As some have noted, this announcement by the Eleventh Circuit is somewhat unprecedented and could be an indication that the prior three member decision will be altered or revised in some form or fashion.  Regardless, with approximately twenty other states having similar legislation in place (prohibiting local ordinances that conflict with statewide laws), the decision from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals could have ramifications beyond just Alabama.


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