Skip to main content

Texas Legislature's Attempt to Ban Local Paid Leave Ordinances Falters as Legislative Session Ends


On May 27th, the Texas Legislature's legislative session ended.  (For those unaware, the Texas Legislature meets only on odd numbered years and is limited to a regular session of 140 calendar days.  With that being said, the Governor may call a special session after the regular session ends.  Notably, the Governor is allowed to call as many special sessions as he/she wants.  However, a special session is limited to only 30 days and lawmakers are only able to consider those issues specifically designated by the Governor.)

During this past legislative session, the Texas Legislature was considering legislation which would have prohibited local municipalities from passing their own paid leave laws.  (Readers will recall that Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio have been at the forefront of this matter, having passed their own paid leave ordinances.)  The Texas Senate, under majority control by Republicans, indicated that passing a bill banning these local ordinances was a priority for the legislative session.  In doing so, several pieces of legislation were put forward this legislative session:

  • Senate Bill 15 sought to eliminate these local ordinances by creating a statewide framework for employment laws in Texas.  However, Senate Bill 15 faltered when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick insisted on removing language from the bill which would have protected nondiscrimination ordinances for LGBTQ workers in the state and support for the legislation dissipated. 
  • Senate Bill 15 was subsequently split up into four separate bills, in an effort to salvage the legislation.  All four of these separate bills managed to pass the Senate.  However, these four separate bills also did not carve out any protections for nondiscrimination ordinances for LGBTZ workers in the state.  Language in regard to the nondiscrimination protection was put back into the bills by the House State Affairs Committee, but failed to advance further.

The question now turns to the inevitable:  What's next?  In short, those hoping for a reprieve from the Legislature are likely out of luck.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott has indicated he has no intent to call a special session.  With that option off the table, short of waiting for the Legislature to reconvene in 2021, employers and business groups have turned their eyes to the courts.  Last year, an appeals court in Austin found that Austin's paid sick leave ordinance was unconstitutional.  (That decision is currently being appealed by the City of Austin.)  Whether the Texas Supreme Court decides to take the case remains to be seen.  Currently, the paid leave ordinances in Dallas and San Antonio remain in place as no lawsuits have yet been filed to challenge those.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more