SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A state appellate court Friday sided with the Schwarzenegger administration in its attempt to temporarily impose the federal minimum wage on tens of thousands of state workers.
It was not clear how the ruling would affect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order a day earlier to pay 200,000 state workers the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour as the state wrestles with a budget crisis.
The state controller, who cuts state paychecks, has refused to comply with the order. The ruling Friday affirms a lower-court decision in favor of the administration in a lawsuit filed two years ago.
The latest ruling from the California 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento concludes that state Controller John Chiang cannot ignore the minimum-wage order from the state Department of Personnel Administration.
It says “the DPA has the authority to direct the controller to defer salary payments in excess of federally mandated minimum wages when appropriations for the salaries are lacking due to a budget impasse.”
Chiang said in a news release that he interpreted the court ruling to mean that his office would not have to comply with the executive order if it was practically infeasible to do so.
“I will move quickly to ask the courts to definitively resolve the issue of whether our current payroll system is capable of complying with the minimum wage order in a way that protects taxpayers from billions of dollars in fines and penalties,” Chiang said in the statement.
The Republican governor issued the order this week because the state remains without a budget, as lawmakers remain far apart on ways to close California’s $19 billion deficit. Schwarzenegger’s minimum- wage order will not affect all of California’s 250,000 government employees. The 37,000 state workers represented by unions that recently negotiated new contracts with the administration will continue to receive their full pay.
Schwarzenegger is pushing for minimum wage based on a 2003 California Supreme Court ruling. In White vs. Davis, the court held that state employees do not have the right to their full salaries if a state budget has not been enacted. At the same time, the state cannot ignore federal wage laws.
