Skip to main content

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

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,...
Post a Comment
Read more

San Diego Rolls Back Vaccine Mandate For City Workers

Last Tuesday, the San Diego City Council voted to do away with the vaccine mandate for city employees. The city’s vaccine mandate that was in place required city workers to get the coronavirus vaccine or risk termination.  Perhaps to this surprise of no one, the city’s policy came under fire with 14 employees being terminated and over 100 other employees resigning.  With the coronavirus subsiding, including in Southern California, the San Diego City Council took action. Now, bear in mind, the repeal of the vaccine mandate does not take place immediately. With that being said, the mandate will be repealed March 8th.  I suppose the question now is, what other cities or regions follow San Diego’s lead? For additional information:   https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2023-01-24/san-diego-repeals-controversial-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-citing-drop-in-cases-hospitalizations
Post a Comment
Read more

NLRB: Former Employee Cannot Be Barred From Work Premises After Filing Wage Suit

MEI-GSR Holdings, LLC - NLRB Facts :  MEI-GSR Holdings, LLC d/b/a Grand Sierra Resort & Casino ("GSR") operated a facility that included a hotel, casino, restaurant, clubs, bars, and a pool which were all open to the general public.  Tiffany Sargent ("Sargent") was briefly employed by GSR as a "beverage supervisor" in December of 2012.  After her employment ended, Sargent continued to socialize at one of the clubs.  GSR had a long standing practice of allowing former employees to patronize its facility and did not prohibit Sargent from doing so.  In June of 2013, Sargent and another employee filed a class and collective action against GSR for alleged unpaid wages, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and Nevada law.  In July of 2014, GSR denied Sargent access to an event at one of the clubs.  GSR followed up with a letter and stated that with the on-going litigation (from the wage suit), it decided to bar Sargent from the premises. ...
1 comment
Read more