Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

 

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Ninth Circuit Hands Off Issues in Detainee-Pay Case

It Asks Washington Supreme Court to Decide Issues Which Are Apt to Affect Litigation Pending in

District Court for the Central District of California Over Application of State Minimum-Wage Law

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday took an action rendering it probable that the Supreme Court of Washington will, in essence, decide whether inmates at an immigration detention facility in California are to be paid for their labor in accordance with this state’s minimum-wage statute.

Circuit judges certified three questions to Washington’s top court. Should it agree to answer those questions, the responses will shape the Ninth Circuit’s decision, one apt to affect not only controversies within the circuit but influence those beyond its borders.

A putative class action was filed on Dec. 19, 2017, in the District Court for the Central District of California by Raul Novoa, who had been detained from 2012 through 2015 at the Adelanto Detention Center in San Bernardino County. He sued under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act and California’s Minimum Wage Law, Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”), and Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and other statutes.

The defendant is The GEO Group, Inc., a Florida outfit that operates private immigration detention facilities, under contract with the federal government, as well as prisons, jails and mental health facilities in the United States and elsewhere.

It generally pays inmates $1 per day (sometimes more, as an incentive) for upkeep of the premises. Novoa’s class seeks back pay.

On Nov. 26, 2019, Judge Jesus G. Bernal, certified the class. Deciding the major issue, he granted partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs on Jan. 25, 2022, holding that GEO violated the Minimum Wage Law and the UCL.

Proceedings Stayed

But on March 31 of last year, he stayed proceedings pending the outcome of the Ninth Circuit appeal by GEO of a $17.3 million back-pay award in favor of detainees at the Northeast ICE Processing Center (“NWIPC”) in the State of Washington and a $5,950,340 to the state for unjust enrichment based on violation of its $11 per hour minimum-pay law. Bernal explained:

“The Court…agrees with Plaintiffs that a stay would delay the instant litigation, which is in its late stages and set for trial on October 4, 2022. However, contrary to Plaintiffs’ assertion, any delay is unlikely to be indefinite….Here, opening briefs have already been filed in the Washington Appeals, answering briefs are due on April 20, 2022, and optional reply briefs are due twenty-one days after service of the answering brief—a few months from now.

He continued:

“These deadlines provide sufficiently definite markers, even if the Ninth Circuit has not yet set a date for oral argument. Plaintiffs aver that the Ninth Circuit’s median time period to reach a merits decision is 15.3 months after the filing of the notice of appeal….While this is not, as GEO contends, a ‘brief period’…, it is not the kind of lengthy delay that counsels against entry of a stay.”

Questions Certified

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit, in an order by Chief Judge Mary H. Murguia and Judges William A. Fletcher and Mark J. Bennett, asked the Washington Supreme Court to decide the key issues in the actions brought by civil detainees and the state. It queried:

“1) In the circumstances of this case, are the detained workers at NWIPC employees within the meaning of Washington’s Minimum Wage Act (‘MWA’)?

“2) If the answer to the first question is yes, does the MWA apply to work performed in comparable circumstances by civil detainees confined in a private detention facility operating under a contract with the State?

“3) If the answer to the first question is yes and the answer to the second question is no. and assuming that the damage award to the detained workers is sustained, is that damage award an adequate legal remedy that would foreclose equitable relief to the State in the form of an unjust enrichment award?”

The judges noted:

“The resolution of these questions is likely to have a significant impact on how the federal government contracts with private detention facilities in the State.”

California’s Position

California is siding with the State of Washington. It has joined with 14 other states and the District of Columbia in a May 27, 2022 amicus brief, asserting:

“Wage and hour laws are laws of general application, pertaining to anyone who conducts business in a given state, regardless of their status as federal contractors, and they do not regulate the federal government itself. GEO’s contrary argument lacks support, and the expansion of the doctrine it seeks would improperly interfere with states’ interests in robust enforcement of the laws and regulations they have designed to protect their workers and the general public.”

The brief cites a 2010 California Supreme Court opinion declaring that the state’s minimum wage statutes were predicated on a legislative determination that the majority of workers were relegated to a below-normal standard of living due to extremely low wages. It also cites a 1990 Ninth Circuit opinion saying that California’s overtime-pay requirements apply to its seamen although they were not covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, and a 2005 California Court of Appeal decision from this district’s Div. Six finding that California’s laws are intended “to protect the minimum wage rights of California employees to a greater extent than federally.”

The Ninth Circuit on Sept. 26 held, in an en banc decision, that California’s ban on private prisons unconstitutionally interferes with hampers the federal governments detention of persons who are in the United States unlawfully and contravenes the Supremacy Clause. GEO brought the action.

 

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