Baltimore County inmates’ minimum wage lawsuit appealed to 4th Circuit

A federal minimum wage lawsuit brought by inmates who worked at Baltimore County’s recycling plant is going before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals following an unfavorable ruling from a lower court.

The plaintiffs appealed after a federal judge in June threw out the class-action lawsuit and found that the inmates are not “employees” under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

Now the 4th Circuit will weigh whether the inmate workers are entitled to minimum wage.

Their lawsuit claimed that the working conditions at the Cockeysville recycling plant were brutal: Prisoners were not provided with proper clothing to keep warm in the open-air facility during the winter, and the inadequate meals pushed some to grab discarded food off the conveyer belt carrying trash and recyclables, according to court records.

Inmates received $20 per day and sometimes worked 10- to 12-hour shifts at the plant, according to the lawsuit. Their jobs involved sorting trash from recyclables so that the county could sell bales of recycled material to the highest bidders.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher granted summary judgment in favor of Baltimore County, finding that the recycling plant work program had a rehabilitative purpose, even if the county also had a profit motive for using cheaper inmate labor.

Now lawyers for the plaintiffs are urging the 4th Circuit to reverse that ruling and find that the county was motivated by economic goals, not rehabilitation. The appeals court has never directly ruled on whether prisoners who work off-site are considered employees under the FLSA.

“A reasonable jury could conclude that the sole focus of the County was to maximize possible revenue from the (Material Recovery Facility) with minimizing the cost of labor, regardless of the harm it could cause to the incarcerated workers,” wrote Howard B. Hoffman, the lawyer for the inmates.

A coalition of 13 organizations, including the national American Civil Liberties Union, several state ACLU affiliates, the Caucus of African American Leaders and the Public Justice Center, have also filed amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs.

The ACLU’s brief argued that prison labor programs have a long history rooted in slavery and racism, and that claims these programs are rehabilitative “echo the rationales used to justify earlier forms of racial oppression, dehumanizing people by insisting that exploitation illegal in any other context is for their own good.”

The amici asked the 4th Circuit to consider economic realities, such as the everyday costs faced by inmates who must pay for calls to family and supplemental food and toiletries while in prison.

In an unusual step, Baltimore County opposed the amicus briefs and argued that the ACLU’s brief contained “inflammatory and irrelevant factual assertions,” including references to the history of prison labor and incarcerated work programs in other states. The amicus briefs were quickly accepted by the court anyway.

Baltimore County declined to comment.

Hoffman, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the effort was a “less than well-developed strategy and maneuver on the part of the county’s private lawyers, which was dealt with appropriately.”