Washington high court says detained immigrant workers should be paid

(CN) — Washington state's highest court issued a unanimous opinion Thursday in favor of a class of immigrant detainees who sued the for-profit prison-runner GEO Group for paying them only $1 a day for work they performed.

The opinion stems from a Ninth Circuit hearing in 2022 where The GEO Group tried to persuade the panel it did not violate Washington state’s minimum wage law when paying immigrant detainees $1 a day for services required in its contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Florida-based corporation owns and operates the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington state. Since 2005, it has contracted with ICE to hold up to 1,575 noncitizen adults in custody awaiting review and determination on deportation.

GEO Group never paid its detained workers the state minimum wage — an hourly rate of $11 in 2017 and soon to be $16.28 in 2024 — leading a federal jury to award a class of 10,000 detainees $17.3 million in back pay and a federal judge to order GEO Group to pay Washington state $5.9 million for the use of detainee labor since 2005.

After GEO Group appealed, the Ninth Circuit panel certified three questions to the Washington Supreme Court.

“The first certified question asks us to determine the threshold issue of whether detained workers at the NWIPC, a private detention center, are ‘employees’ within the meaning of the MWA,” Justice James M. Johnson wrote for the unanimous court Thursday. “Our answer is yes.”

The second question involves whether the “government-institutions exemption” for Washington state’s Minimum Wage Act applies to working detainees in a private facility with a state contract. Under that exemption, the state defines an employee as any individual employed by an employer besides “any resident, inmate or patient of a state, county municipality correctional, detention, treatment or rehabilitative institution.”

“Our answer is no,” Johnson wrote, noting the central argument for both questions involves whether the Washington Legislature drafted the state’s minimum wage law to apply to individuals in detention or custody who are permitted to work. Attorneys for both the state and class believed so, adding that since the exemption only applies to individuals in public, government-run institutions, it doesn’t apply to detained workers in GEO Group’s private facility.

However, GEO Group argued the exemption’s language does not distinguish between publicly and privately operated facilities, arguing as paraphrased by Johnson that “if the Legislature intended to create such a distinction, it would do so explicitly.”

For Johnson, the corporation’s argument undercuts its argument “because the Legislature, by specifying that the exemption applies to persons detained in ‘state, county or municipal’ institutions, distinguished public institutions from private institutions.”

“And, as GEO states, if the Legislature intended to also exclude persons detained in private institutions, it would have done so explicitly,” Johnson added.

Johnson also threw out GEO Group’s argument that a different exemption applied to its detainees — one that applies to people who sleep or reside at work for their duties.

“Accordingly, we conclude the reside or sleep exemption does not apply to persons who work in the facility in which they are detained because their duties do not require them to sleep or reside in the facility,” Johnson wrote. “Here, the detained workers are in the custody of ICE and are not permitted to leave the detention facility until ordered released or removed. It is their detention that requires them to sleep or reside at the NWIPC, not their participation in the work program.”

The third certified question involved whether the federal jury’s damage award to the class of detainees forecloses the unjust enrichment relief awarded to the state.

“The class and the state are separate parties that brought separate causes of action against GEO,” Johnson wrote. “GEO does not cite to any authority in which we have held the award of a legal remedy to one party forecloses the availability of an equitable remedy to a separate party. And we decline to so hold now. Accordingly, the MWA damages award to the class does not bar equitable relief on the basis of unjust enrichment to the state.”

Johnson also rejected GEO Group’s argument on how the detained workers, not the state, conferred the benefit on the prison operator for Washington’s unjust enrichment claim. The high court found the state represents the rights and interests of detainees harmed by GEO Group’s failure to pay fair wages from 2005 to 2021, including those held in the Tacoma detention center.

“The state’s unjust enrichment claim does not fail on this basis, and the award of equitable relief to the State is consistent with Washington law,” Johnson wrote.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson applauded the ruling, calling it "a major victory for Washington workers and basic human dignity."

Chief Justice Steven C. González and Justices Sheryl Gordon McCloud, Barbara A. Madsen, Mary I. Yu, Susan Owens, Raquel Montoya-Lewis, Debra L. Stephens and G. Helen Whitener concurred.

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