Court upholds disabled workers case

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio last week upheld a 2016 decision from the U.S. Department of Labor that found three individuals employed by Seneca Re-Ad Industries, Inc., are not disabled for the work they perform and cannot be paid less than minimum wage. According to a news release distributed for Disability Rights Ohio, the court affirmed the department's award of back pay and liquidated damages to Pamela Steward, Ralph "Joe" Magers and Mark Felton. Attorneys from Disability Rights Ohio and Brown, Goldstein and Levy represented the complainants. Seneca Re-Ad Industries, Inc., operates a sheltered workshop in Seneca County that performs work for Roppe Corporation of Fostoria, an international flooring manufacturer, and is overseen by the Seneca County Board of Developmental Disabilities. A phone message left at Roppe seeking comment was not returned on Wednesday. A person who answered the phone at Seneca Re-Ad declined to identify herself, declined to comment and said she would pass the message on to another person. No other phone call came to the Review Times. "This court action is a clear victory for those working to reverse subminimum wage and affirms our belief that having a disability does not make one unworthy of fair pay," said Kerstin Sjoberg, Disability Rights executive director. The news release said Steward, Magers and Felton, with the support of the National Federation of the Blind, filed a petition with the Department of Labor challenging their receipt of subminimum wages. The Department of Labor, in what the news release called a "precedent-setting decision," said employers cannot rely on a provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act that allows for individuals with disabilities to be paid less than minimum wage without "clear evidence" that a person's disability impacts his or her productivity. "The National Federation of the Blind has fought the payment of subminimum wages to the blind and other workers with disabilities since our founding," said Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind. "Now, after nearly a decade of litigation, a federal court has affirmed, for the first time, that disability by itself cannot be used to demonstrate lower productivity even under the terms of Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This ruling points to the truth that we have always known: The subminimum wage exemption is simply a manifestation of society's low expectations and false assumptions regarding the capacity of workers with disabilities. "We applaud the court for recognizing this truth as it applies to the courageous workers who took their case to the Department of Labor, but we will not rest until no blind or disabled workers can be victimized by this antiquated, discriminatory and immoral practice." In addition to reaffirming the Department of Labor's decision, the court rejected Seneca Re-Ad's argument that the administrative law judge who ruled on the petition was not properly appointed under the U.S. Constitution. "Eight years ago, a Department of Labor administrative law judge affirmed what Pamela Steward, Joe Magers and Mark Felton have known all along: that they are not disabled for the work they perform at Seneca Re-Ad and that they cannot be paid less than the minimum wage," said Kevin Docherty, a partner at Brown, Goldstein and Levy. "The court's ruling, upholding the Department of Labor's landmark decision, is an important step forward in the fight to curtail payment of subminimum wages to individuals with disabilities."