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Implimentation of San Antonio's Paid Sick Leave Ordinance Delayed


Recently, a coalition of business groups filed a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio, seeking to block the implementation of a paid sick leave ordinance that was set to take effect August 1st.  That ordinance requires businesses in the city with more than 15 employees to allow those employees to accrue 64 hours of paid sick leave per year.  For smaller businesses in the city, employees would be allowed to accrue 48 hours of paid sick leave per year.

Readers might recall that San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas had all approved paid sick leave ordinance for workers in their cities in recent years.  A fight over Austin's paid sick leave ordinance quickly commenced with that fight still ongoing in court.  As well, the Texas Legislature had been on the verge of outlawing local paid sick leave ordinances across the state, but those efforts stalled out before the Legislature ended its session earlier this year.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott does not appear to be willing to call a special session of the Legislature to take up the matter again (although he has the power to do so, if he wanted.)  Assuming no special session is called, the Legislature's next opportunity to consider a ban on these local paid leave ordinances will be when it meets again...in 2021.

With the filing of the lawsuit against the City of San Antonio, the business groups have argued that by requiring employers to pay employees for hours not worked (via a paid sick leave ordinance), this ordinance violates the Texas Minimum Wage Act.  The argument follows that because the Texas Minimum Wage Act prevents local cities and municipalities from requiring private employers to pay more than the minimum wage rate, this ordinance is unlawful.

After the lawsuit was filed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion to join the lawsuit against the City of San Antonio.  Following that news, it was announced that all parties had agreed to stay the implementation of the paid sick leave law until December 1st in order to allow it to be potentially tailored in order to meet judicial approval.  (The approval of the request to delay the implementation was granted by Judge Sol Casseb, a Judge in San Antonio that I have practiced before many times.  In his Court, I have tended to see him encourage parties to work things out amicably before he will get involved.  In this instance, I am not surprised that he agreed to the request to delay implementation of the ordinance for several months while a potential resolution to the matter is discussed.)



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