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Texas Supreme Court Declines to Review Injunction of City of Austin’s Paid Sick Leave Ordinance


Earlier this month, the Texas Supreme Court denied the City of Austin’s appeal of an injunction that has prohibited Austin’s paid sick leave ordinance from taking effect.

Readers will likely recall there has been a prolonged fight over the issue, dating all the way back to 2018.  As a bit of a refresher, the City of Austin approved a paid sick leave ordinance.  The ordinance would apply to all private employers in the city and was quite broad in terms of coverage:  any employee that worked at least 80 hours in Austin during a calendar year was eligible for the paid sick leave.  For every 30 hours worked, one hour of paid sick leave would be accrued.  (For employees working for employers with more than 15 employees, up to 64 hours of paid sick leave could be accrued; for employees working for employers with 15 or fewer employees, up to 48 hours of paid sick leave could be accrued.)

Austin, the first city in Texas to approve such a measure, quickly came under fire by critics.  Although set to take effect in October of 2018, an appeals court in Texas issued a ruling to prevent the ordinance from taking effect as originally scheduled.  The court of appeals issued a decision in which it found Austin’s paid leave ordinance violated the Texas Constitution and was preempted by the Texas Minimum Wage Act.  (After being remanded by the court of appeals, a lower court issued an injunction.). After appealing the matter to the Texas Supreme Court last spring, things had been somewhat slow going. The Texas Supreme Court sought briefs on the matter and after nearly 15 months, issued a one line decision denying the petition for review.

What does this mean exactly?  For starters, employers in the city have won another battle here.  The injunction remains in effect, pending an expected trial on the matter.  The Texas Supreme Court’s decision to deny hearing the matter is not necessarily a death knell for supporters of the paid leave ordinance.  However, with the Texas Supreme Court not taking up the matter, it leaves supporters of the paid leave ordinance with one less avenue to seeing this ordinance taking effect.  While supporters of the paid leave ordinance are down but not out (yet), their options are dwindling.


For additional information:  https://aboutbtax.com/Rjf

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