Credit: WBRC video
Attempts to increase the minimum wage in Birmingham from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour were thwarted in 2016, but now a Federal Appeals Court decision could restart the push for $10.10 an hour.
The decision by the 11th Circuit Court reverses a judge’s ruling in a lawsuit against the state in 2016. That suite claimed that a state law which blocked the Birmingham push to raise the minimum wage was "tainted with racial animus"
The decision goes on to say "Today, racism is no longer pledged from the portico of the capitol or exclaimed from the floor of the constitutional convention; it hides, abashed, cloaked beneath ostensibly neutral laws and legitimate bases, steering government power toward no less invidious ends,"
The court’s ruling was narrow, in that it only revived the racial discrimination claim, while upholding the dismissal of all other claims in the suite.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has not yet commented on this ruling.