On Wednesday, a lawsuit resurfaced that accuses the Alabama legislature of discriminating against the city of Birmingham by preventing the city, which is majority-black, from setting their own minimum wage within city limits.
The decision to dismiss the lawsuit has been reversed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, saying “plaintiffs have stated a plausible claim that the Minimum Wage Act had the purpose and effect of depriving Birmingham’s black citizens’ equal economic opportunities on the basis of race.”
Birmingham would have been the first southern city to raise the hourly minimum wage, but before it was implemented, the Alabama legislature quickly passed their law, requiring every city to have the same minimum wage. Fast food workers and civil rights groups worked together to file a lawsuit, with the argument that the law was “tainted with racial animus”, since it was pushed and enacted by white suburban Republican legislators in the majority-white Alabama Legislature and disproportionately affected black workers in the majority black city.
Source: http://atlantablackstar.com/2018/07/28/gop-legislators-blocked-a-minimum-wage-raise-impacting-mostly-black-workers-so-they-filed-a-lawsuit/
