Lewis v. Governor of Ala.

• Decision Date: 13 December 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-11009,17-11009
• Parties: Marnika LEWIS, Antoin Adams, Alabama State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Greater Birmingham Ministries, Marika Coleman, John Rogers, Priscilla Dunn, Juandalynn Givan, Louise Alexander, William Muhammad, Rodger Smitherman, Oliver Robinson, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, Mary Moore, Plaintiffs - Appellants, v. GOVERNOR OF ALABAMA, in her Official Capacity as Governor of the State of Alabama, Attorney General, State of Alabama, in his Official Capacity as Attorney General of the State of Alabama, State of Alabama, The, Birmingham, City of, The, Mayor of Birmingham, in his official Capacity as Mayor of Birmingham, Defendants - Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

944 F.3d 1287

Marnika LEWIS, Antoin Adams, Alabama State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Greater Birmingham Ministries, Marika Coleman, John Rogers, Priscilla Dunn, Juandalynn Givan, Louise Alexander, William Muhammad, Rodger Smitherman, Oliver Robinson, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, Mary Moore, Plaintiffs - Appellants,

v.GOVERNOR OF ALABAMA, in her Official Capacity as Governor of the State of Alabama, Attorney General, State of Alabama, in his Official Capacity as Attorney General of the State of Alabama, State of Alabama, The, Birmingham, City of, The, Mayor of Birmingham, in his official Capacity as Mayor of Birmingham, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 17-11009

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

December 13, 2019

Barbara Jane Chisholm, Altshuler Berzon, LLP, San Francisco, CA, Richard Paul Rouco, Glen M. Connor, George Nicholas Davies, Quinn Connor Weaver Davies & Rouco, LLP, Birmingham, AL, Mary Joyce Carlson, Law Office of Mary Joyce Carlson, Washington, DC, Edward Still, Edward Still Law Firm, LLC, Birmingham, AL, Robert H. Stroup, Levy Ratner, PC, New York, NY, Joe R. Whatley, Jr., Whatley Kallas, LLP, New York, NY, for Plaintiffs-Appellants Marnika Lewis, Antoin Adams, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Greater Birmingham Ministries.

James Uriah Blacksher, Attorney at Law, Birmingham, AL, U. W. Clemon, U.W. Clemon, LLC, Birmingham, AL, Edward Still, for Plaintiffs-Appellants Marika Coleman, John Rogers, Priscilla Dunn, Juandalynn Givan, Louise Alexander, William Muhammad, Rodger Smitherman, Oliver Robinson, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, Mary Moore.

William Glenn Parker, Jr., David B. Byrne, Jr., Office of the Governor, Montgomery, AL, James W. Davis, Edmund Gerard LaCour, Jr., Steven Marshall, Alabama Attorney General's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Defendant-Appellee Governor of Alabama.

James W. Davis, Edmund Gerard LaCour, Jr., Steven Marshall, Alabama Attorney General's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Defendant-Appellee Attorney General, State of Alabama.

William Glenn Parker, Jr., Office of the Governor, Montgomery, AL, Edmund Gerard LaCour, Jr., Steven Marshall, Alabama Attorney General's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Defendant-Appellee State of Alabama.

Fredric L. Fullerton, II, Kayla Lawrence, City of Birmingham Law Department, Birmingham, AL, for Defendants-Appellees Birmingham, City of, William A. Bell, Sr.

Samuel Jacob Brooke, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL, Miya Chen, Benjamin Beach, The Partnership for Working Families, Oakland, CA, for Amicus Curiae The Partnership for Working Families.

Jon M. Greenbaum, Dariely Rodriguez, Ezra D. Rosenberg, Thomas Samuel Silverstein, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Washington, DC, Michael N. Litrownik, Bromberg Law Office, PC, New York, NY, for Amicus Curiae Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law.

Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law School, Mills Legal Clinic, Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA, Joyce White Vance, University of Alabama School of Law, Birmingham, AL, for Amici Curiae Susan Ashmore, Wayne Flynt, Hasan Jeffries, J. Morgan Kousser, Peyton McCrary, Patricia Sullivan.

Samuel Jacob Brooke, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL, for Amicus Curiae Southern Poverty Law Center.

Amy Farr Robertson, Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, Denver, CO, for Amici Curiae Kasim Reed, Andrew Gillum, Karen Freeman-Wilson, Oliver G. Gilbert, III, Local Progress.

Deuel Ross, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., New York, NY, Amici Curiae NAACP Legal Defense, Educational Fund, Inc., Campaign Legal Center.

Albert Loring Vreeland, II, Lehr Middlebrooks Vreeland & Thompson, PC, Birmingham, AL, for Amici Curiae Alabama Retail Association, Business Council of Alabama, Alabama Restaurant & Hospitality Association, Alabama Grocers Association, Alabama Policy Institute, National Restaurant Association, Asian American Hotel Owners Association, National Federation of Independent Business.

Jason R. LaFond, Attorney General's Office, Austin, TX, for Amici Curiae, The State of Texas, The State of Arkansas, The State of Georgia, The State of Indiana, The State of Louisiana, The State of Missouri.

Michael E. Rosman, Center for Individual Rights, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae Center for Individual Rights.

Paul DeCamp, Epstein Becker & Green, PC, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae Restaurant Law Center.

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, WILSON, WILLIAM PRYOR, MARTIN, JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, BRANCH, GRANT, TJOFLAT, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.^*

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge, delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ED CARNES, Chief Judge, and WILLIAM PRYOR, BRANCH, GRANT, TJOFLAT, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges, joined.

WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion.

WILSON, Circuit Judge, filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARTIN, JORDAN, ROSENBAUM, and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, joined.

JORDAN, Circuit Judge, filed a dissenting opinion, in which WILSON, MARTIN, ROSENBAUM, and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, joined.

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge:

This case arises out of a political tug-of-war between the State of Alabama and the City of Birmingham over economic policy—in particular, over minimum-wage rates. We’ll delve into the details soon enough, but here’s the short story: In 2015, the Birmingham City Council petitioned the Alabama Legislature to raise the minimum wage, statewide, above the $7.25 federal baseline. When the Legislature declined—and following some back-and-forth with state officials—the City took matters into its own hands, eventually adopting a local ordinance that immediately increased the minimum wage within Birmingham’s city limits by 39%, to $10.10. The Legislature responded by enacting a statute that aimed to standardize wage policy throughout the state by prohibiting and "void[ing]" any local law that required employers, among other things, to pay wages higher than state or federal law mandates. That statute—Act No. 2016-18—had the effect of nullifying Birmingham’s minimum-wage ordinance.

Two African-American minimum-wage employees who work in Birmingham at a rate lower than the $10.10 prescribed by the City’s ordinance brought suit, alleging that Act No. 2016-18 violated (as relevant here) the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, though, than suing their employers—who, pursuant to the Act, were refusing to pay the $10.10—the employees opted to sue (again, as relevant here) the Alabama Attorney General. That choice presents us with an important threshold question: Do the employees have Article III standing to sue the Attorney General? We hold that they do not—in particular, because they cannot demonstrate either (1) that their alleged injuries are fairly traceable to his conduct or (2) that those injuries would be redressed by the declaratory and injunctive relief they have requested. Because we conclude that the employees lack standing to sue, we need not (and indeed cannot) consider the merits of their equal-protection claim.

I

A

The seed of this appeal was planted in April 2015, when the Birmingham City Council adopted a resolution formally urging the Alabama Legislature to raise the minimum wage, statewide, above the $7.25 federal rate. The Legislature declined to do so, and in response, in August 2015, the City Council enacted an ordinance, No. 15-124, that gradually increased the minimum wage for Birmingham-based workers—the rate would go up to $8.50 roughly one year after the ordinance’s enactment, and then to $10.10 a year after that.

About six months later, in early February 2016—before the initial increase prescribed by Ordinance No. 15-124 had gone into effect—a member of the Alabama House of Representatives introduced a bill, HB 174, to standardize labor policy throughout the state and, in particular, to establish a uniform statewide minimum wage. To that end, HB 174—which would become Act No. 2016-18, the law challenged here—did two things. First, it expressly prohibited local "mandate[s]" obligating employers to give their employees "any employment benefit, including ... wage[s], ... that is not required by state or federal law" and declared all such mandates "void." Ala. Act No. 2016-18 § 2(b)–(c). Second, and more generally, it "preempt[ed] the entire field of regulation in [Alabama] touching in any way upon ... wages ... provided by an employer to an employee ... to the complete exclusion of any policy, ordinance, rule, or other mandate promulgated or enforced by any county, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state." Id. § 6(b). So while HB 174 didn’t itself specify a minimum wage, it would, if adopted, effectively transform the federal minimum into both a floor and a ceiling—thereby nullifying Birmingham’s ordinance. The Alabama House of Representatives passed HB 174 on February 16, 2016, one week after it was introduced.

With HB 174 winding its way through the state legislative process, the Birmingham City Council moved to accelerate the implementation of its own minimum-wage law. On February 23, 2016, it adopted a second ordinance—No. 16-28, at issue here—which immediately raised the minimum wage for Birmingham-based workers to $10.10. The new ordinance not only imposed a $100-per-day-per-employee penalty on any employer who failed to comply but also gave aggrieved employees an express private right of action against their employers. In particular, the ordinance stated that—

Any Employee who is paid less than the minimum wage established under this Ordinance may bring a civil cause of action against his/her Employer for the full amount of wages due from the Employer in any court of competent jurisdiction and, upon prevailing, shall be awarded any appropriate legal or equitable relief, including: unpaid wages and an additional two times that amount as liquidated damages; reinstatement; actual damages; civil penalties; and reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs.

Birmingham,...