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Time is running out to cast your votes in the ABA Journal’s fifth Annual Blawg 100 contest to choose the most popular law blogs. To vote for your favorites, go to abajournal.com/blawg100 by December 30.
The blogs are divided into 12 categories, and voters are allowed 12 votes. But you are allowed to vote more than once in each category.
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear arguments in Arizona v. United States, the lawsuit concerning the constitutionality of the state’s controversial immigration enforcement measure S.B. 1070. The bill originally was scheduled to become law in June 2010. However, shortly before it went into operation, the U.S. District Court for Arizona issued an injunction preventing four key parts of the measure from taking effect. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, and the following provisions of the law have remained stalled since:
Arizona’s minimum wage will increase 30 cents to $7.65 for the 2012 calendar year, making it 40 cents higher than the federal minimum wage.
The increase is a result of Proposition 202, also known as the Raise the Arizona Minimum Wage for Working Arizonans Act, which was approved by state voters in 2006. The Act established a minimum wage for Arizona and provides for annual increases based on increases in the cost of living.
By law, the federal consumer price index for all urban consumers, U.S. city average (CPI-U), for goods and services during the 12 months ending each August 31 is the benchmark for whether the Arizona minimum wage will increase the next calendar year. The CPI-U increased 3.8 percent between August 2010 and August 2011.
Following through on the strategy announced in April, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer filed a petition yesterday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court decisions blocking implementation of key provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s tough immigration law.
A federal district judge in Arizona blocked four provisions of the law, formally known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, from taking effect in July 2010. The injunction allowed certain aspects of the law to go into effect but blocked other provisions, including one making it a crime for an illegal immigrant to solicit, apply for, or perform any work in the state.
Employers that require workers to travel to and work within California may be subject to the state’s overtime laws even though their employees are nonresidents. The California Supreme Court decided last week that the California Labor Code applies to the overtime claims of three nonresident instructors who performed work within the state. The employees, who worked for Oracle, worked mainly in their home states (Arizona and Colorado) but were required to travel to California as part of their positions. The instructors alleged that Oracle’s failure to pay overtime for work performed in California was a violation of the state’s Labor Code as well as an unlawful business act under the state’s unfair competition law.
The court determined that California’s overtime law applies to all work performed in the state in excess of eight hours in one workday and 40 hours in one workweek regardless of the employee’s place of residence. The court noted that the state’s overtime laws were designed to serve important public-policy goals such as protecting the health and safety of employees from “the evils associated with overwork” and providing an incentive to spread employment to a greater number of individuals. These policies would not be served by excluding nonresidents from the state’s overtime laws. In addition, any extra burden on employers as a result of complying with California’s overtime laws would be incidental. The court held that the state’s overtime laws don’t apply to work performed outside California.
Thursday, May 26, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Legal Arizona Workers Act (Act), an Arizona employment law that allows the state to sanction employers that knowingly or intentionally employ “unauthorized aliens.” The first provision of the Act punishes certain employers that hire unauthorized aliens by suspending or revoking their business licenses. The second provision requires employers to check the immigration status of new employees through E-Verify, a federal online employment verification program.
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States, along with several business and civil rights organizations (collectively, Chamber), filed a federal lawsuit against the individuals tasked with administering the Act. The Chamber argued that federal immigration law preempted the two provisions of the Act. The district court determined that federal law didn’t preempt the Act because the law imposed licensing conditions only on businesses operating within the state and the U.S. Congress hadn’t expressed the intent to prevent states from requiring employers to use E-Verify. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision.
As the new year approaches, a number of states will see index-driven increases to their minimum wage rates. Specifically, Arizona, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington will each add around 10 cents per hour to their existing wage rates, based on an increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of a little more than one percent from August 2009 to August 2010. Two other states, Florida and Missouri, have chosen not to adjust their indexed wages.
In Arizona, the state minimum wage will increase from $7.25 to $7.35 per hour and will remain at that rate throughout the next year. Tipped employees’ hourly wages also will increase 10 cents, from $4.25 to $4.35. The new minimum wage must be posted in an area where employees can read the poster, such as the break room.
By Dinita L. James, Ford & Harrison LLP
By a slim margin, Arizona has become the 15th state in the nation to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Proposition 203, or the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, trailed by about 6,000 votes in early election night returns. Yet, after 10 days of counting early voter and provisional ballots, the final, though still unofficial, tally has put the yes votes ahead by a mere 4,341 votes out of the nearly 1.7 million cast.
by Dinita L. James, Ford & Harrison LLP
Arizona voters surfed the national Republican wave, flip-flopping the party affiliation of its U.S. House delegation, putting every statewide office in Republican hands, and likely giving the GOP a supermajority in the Arizona Legislature when final vote tallies are in.
by David I. Weissman, Ford & Harrison LLP
Arizona voters resoundingly said “no thank you” to federal health care reform legislation on Election Day, voting in favor of Arizona Proposition 106 by a fairly significant margin. Proposition 106 amends the Arizona Constitution by: read more…
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