Allied Concrete & Supply Co. v. Baker
| Decision Date | 20 September 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 17-55503, No. 17-55343,No. 16-56546,16-56546 |
| Parties | ALLIED CONCRETE AND SUPPLY CO., a California corporation; CalPortland Company, a California Corporation; Gary Bale Redi-Mix Concrete, Inc., a California corporation; Holliday Rock Co., Inc., a California corporation; National Ready Mixed Concrete Co., a California corporation; Robertson’s Ready Mix, Ltd., a California limited partnership; Spragues Rock and Sand Company, a California corporation; Superior Ready Mix Concrete L.P., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Christine BAKER, in her official capacity as the Director of the Department of Industrial Relations of the State of California; Julie A. Su, in her official capacity as Labor Commissioner of the State of California, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Defendants, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Intervenor-Defendant-Appellant. Allied Concrete and Supply Co., a California corporation; CalPortland Company, a California Corporation; Gary Bale Redi-Mix Concrete, Inc., a California corporation; Holliday Rock Co., Inc., a California corporation; National Ready Mixed Concrete Co., a California corporation; Robertson’s Ready Mix, Ltd., a California limited partnership; Spragues Rock and Sand Company, a California corporation; Superior Ready Mix Concrete L.P., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Christine Baker, in her official capacity as the Director of the Department of Industrial Relations of the State of California; Julie A. Su, in her official capacity as Labor Commissioner of the State of California, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Defendants-Appellants. Allied Concrete and Supply Co., a California corporation; CalPortland Company, a California Corporation; Gary Bale Redi-Mix Concrete, Inc., a California corporation; Holliday Rock Co., Inc., a California corporation; National Ready Mixed Concrete Co., a California corporation; Robertson’s Ready Mix, Ltd., a California limited partnership; Spragues Rock and Sand Company, a California corporation; Superior Ready Mix Concrete L.P., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Christine Baker, in her official capacity as the Director of the Department of Industrial Relations of the State of California; Julie A. Su, in her official capacity as Labor Commissioner of the State of California, Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Ken Lau (argued), Assistant Chief Counsel; Christopher Jagard, Chief Counsel; Office of the Director—Legal Unit, Department of Industrial Relations, Oakland, California; John J. Korbol and Mi Kim, Counsel, Office of the Director—Legal Unit, Department of Industrial Relations, Los Angeles, California; for Defendants-Appellants/Cross-Appellees.
Michael G. Yoder (argued) and Christopher S. Whittaker, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Newport Beach, California; Anton Metlitsky, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, New York, New York; for Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants.
Scott A. Kronland (argued), Stacey M. Leyton, and Eric P. Brown, Altshuler Berzon LLP, San Francisco, California, for Intervenor-Defendant-Appellant/Amicus Curiae.
Kerry Shapiro, Jon Wilner, and Matthew J. Sanders, Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP, San Francisco, California, for Amicus Curiae California Construction and Industrial Materials Association.
Before: A. Wallace Tashima, Richard A. Paez, and Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Circuit Judges.
California’s general prevailing wage laws ensure that workers employed on public works projects are paid a minimum wage. In 2015, California amended the prevailing wage laws to include delivery drivers of ready-mix concrete. Cal. Lab. Code § 1720.9.
A group of ready-mix concrete suppliers (collectively, "Plaintiffs") challenged § 1720.9, alleging that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ("equal protection claim") and that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 ("FAAAA") preempted the state law. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters ("IBT") moved to intervene on the side of the State to defend the law.
The district court denied IBT’s motion to intervene and granted the State’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ FAAAA preemption claim. However, the district court granted Plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion on the equal protection claim, concluding that § 1720.9 did not pass muster under the rational basis test. The court reasoned that there were no legally relevant differences between ready-mix drivers and other delivery drivers; therefore, the State did not have any legitimate justification for singling out the ready-mix suppliers.
We conclude that the district court wrongly disregarded as irrelevant certain differences between ready-mix drivers and other drivers that the legislature could have relied on in extending the prevailing wage law. We thus reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Plaintiffs and order the court to enter judgment on behalf of Defendants. Likewise, we hold that IBT had a significantly protectable interest at stake in the case and we reverse the district court’s denial of IBT’s motion for leave to intervene. On the FAAAA preemption question, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claim.
California’s prevailing wage law establishes the minimum wage that workers employed on "public works" must receive. See Cal. Lab. Code §§ 1720, 1771. "Public works" is generally defined as construction or related work, done under contract, and paid for in any part out of public funds. Id . § 1720(a)(1). The California Supreme Court has described the purpose of the general prevailing wage law:
The overall purpose of the prevailing wage law ... is to benefit and protect employees on public works projects. This general objective subsumes within it a number of specific goals: to protect employees from substandard wages that might be paid if contractors could recruit labor from distant cheap-labor areas; to permit union contractors to compete with nonunion contractors; to benefit the public through the superior efficiency of well-paid employees; and to compensate nonpublic employees with higher wages for the absence of job security and employment benefits enjoyed by public employees.
Lusardi Constr. Co. v. Aubry , 1 Cal.4th 976, 4 Cal.Rptr.2d 837, 824 P.2d 643, 649 (1992).
The California Director of Industrial Relations (the "Director") publishes the prevailing wage rates and enforces the law by collecting payroll (and other related) records from employers. Cal. Lab. Code §§ 1771.4, 1776. Further, when there is a question about the applicability of the prevailing wage law, the Director determines "whether a specific project or type of work is a public work." Id. at § 1773.5(b); see also id. § 1773(c) (). When there is a dispute, courts may also review whether a worker is entitled to prevailing wages. See, e.g. , Williams v. SnSands Corp. , 156 Cal.App.4th 742, 67 Cal.Rptr.3d 606 (2007) ; O.G. Sansone Co. v. Dep’t of Transp. , 55 Cal.App.3d 434, 127 Cal.Rptr. 799 (1976). Courts and the Director both ask whether the worker’s task was "functionally related to the process of construction," and "an integrated aspect of the ‘flow’ process of construction." O.G. Sansone , 127 Cal.Rptr. at 804 ; see also A&A Ready Mix Concrete , Public Works Case No. 99-037 (Dep’t of Indus. Relations Apr. 10, 2000).
On October 10, 2015, Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr., signed AB 219, which amended California’s prevailing wage law by adding Labor Code § 1720.9. It provides that "public works" include "the hauling and delivery of ready-mixed concrete to carry out a public works contract" regardless of who employs the driver or whether the driver is delivering from a dedicated batch plant. Cal. Lab. Code § 1720.9. Therefore, all ready-mix drivers delivering to public works must be paid prevailing wages. Before adopting the final bill, the California Legislature considered a version of AB 219 that would have required payment of prevailing wages to asphalt delivery drivers as well, but ultimately limited the expansion to ready-mix concrete drivers.
Ready-mix concrete is defined as "concrete that is manufactured in a factory or a batching plant, according to a set recipe, and then delivered in a liquefied state by mixer truck for immediate incorporation into a project." Id. § 1720.9(b). Its ingredients are prepared and mixed at a concrete plant. Production of concrete is time-sensitive because concrete begins to set quickly after water is added. Ready-mix is delivered in specialized trucks with a rotating tank. Id . Drivers of ready-mix trucks control the amount of water added to the rotating tank and the speed at which the tank spins, meaning that they can alter the nature of the concrete.1 By contrast, even though asphalt delivery may also be time-sensitive, drivers transport asphalt in dump trucks, rather than mixing trucks, and drivers cannot alter the asphalt once it is in the truck. For certain projects, such as paving roads, asphalt and ready-mix are interchangeable, for others, such as building walls and other structural supports, the materials are not substitutes.
On June 30, 2016, Plaintiffs filed a complaint against the Director and the Labor Commissioner of the State of California (collectively, the "State").2 The Complaint alleged that § 1720.9 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, or alternatively, is preempted by the FAAAA, and sought injunctive and declaratory relief. Before the State answered the complaint, IBT moved for leave to intervene, either as of right or permissively. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(a) & (b). On August 22, 2016, Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction on their equal protection claim. Before the court ruled on Plaintiffs’ motion for...
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