Can a Minimum Wage Law Be Racist?

Yes. In tomorrow’s employment law class, we discuss Birmingham, Alabama’s recent ordinance that raised the minimum wage above the federal floor ($7.25 per hour, unchanged since 2009 due to GOP blocking of bills to raise it) to $10.10 per hour. 
The City is 72% black; its elected officials are mostly black; and they passed the law to raise incomes of Birmingham residents who work in the community. The City’s view is that poverty escalates crime, neighborhood stagnation, and related problems.

No business in Birmingham challenged the law. No, a state legislator from the whitest and wealthiest suburb in Birmingham introduced a bill to prohibit any Alabama city from raising the minimum wage (federal law allows a state or city to do this). The bill was supported only by white lawmakers (100%); the bill was opposed by black lawmakers (100%).

A federal court of appeals recently ruled that blacks who sued to challenge the state law could proceed to trial. Here are stunning excerpts from the court’s opinion—from a court that has a conservative bent.

What we know from the pleadings is that the Act immediately denied a significant wage increase to roughly 40,000 Birmingham residents, the vast majority of whom were black. These facts are more than sufficient to support a plausible allegation that the Minimum Wage Act burdens black citizens more than white ones.
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The plaintiffs’ amended complaint presents detailed factual allegations which (may prove) the disproportionate effect of the Minimum Wage Act on Birmingham’s poorest black residents; the rushed, reactionary, and racially polarized nature of the legislative process; and Alabama’s historical use of state power to deny local black majorities authority over economic decision-making. The Minimum Wage Act responded directly to the legislative efforts of the majority-black Birmingham City Council, which represents more black citizens (and more black citizens living in poverty) than any other city in Alabama.
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The Act swiftly nullified efforts of those Birmingham City Council members to benefit their majority-black constituents even though the Alabama legislature had previously “failed to take any action to establish a statewide minimum wage law and had been indifferent to efforts to establish such a law.”
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The Act was introduced by a white representative from Alabama’s least diverse area, with the help of fifty-two other white sponsors, and was objected to by all black members of the House and Senate. And it was accelerated through the legislative process in sixteen days with little or no opportunity for public comment or debate. These facts plausibly imply discriminatory motivations were at play.