City Council Re-Enacts Wage Ordinance, Which Courts Will Probably Invalidate

By Walter Moore, Chief Economist and Legal Analyst, L.A. Policy Institute.

The City Council, by a 10-to-3 vote, re-enacted an ordinance to require a handful of hotels near the airport to pay employees more than the state minimum wage.

The Council had enacted essentially the same law before, but repealed it after L.A. businesses submitted petitions with enough signatures to force the Council to repeal it or let voters decide whether to appeal it. The Council thus avoided a refererndum on the issue by repealing the ordinance, and, after doing so, simply enacted it again, with slight changes.

The hotels have vowed to take the matter to court.

I predict the Court will invalidate the new ordinance, either in its entirety or, more likely, the provisions requiring the hotels to pay higher wages. The law, at least in theory, forbids a person -- in this case, City Hall -- from doing indirectly what it cannot do directly. The City, having opted to repeal the ordinance rather than face an election, cannot circumvent the law merely by attaching a few additional provisions to the same law.

You can read about it in the L.A. Times.