Posted on 03/27/2002 3:11:53 PM PST by healey22
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that illegal immigrants do not have the same rights as Americans when they are wrongly fired from U.S. jobs.
The court split 5-4 on whether companies can be forced to give back pay to illegal workers when they mistreat them on the job.
"Awarding back pay to illegal aliens runs counter to policies underlying" federal immigration laws, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in the court's opinion.
The Bush administration had argued that penalties are needed to keep employers from wronging illegal workers, considering the estimated 7 million undocumented workers in the United States.
U.S. citizens are entitled to back pay if wrongly fired. The National Labor Relations Board said Jose Castro, even though he was an illegal worker, was owed nearly $67,000.
Castro, a Mexican national, lied to get a job at a California plant and then was fired after trying to start a union.
Rehnquist said the employer in the case, Hoffman Plastic Compounds Inc., can be subject to "significant other sanctions" including a requirement that it prominently post a notice to employees about their rights.
Justice Stephen Breyer (news - web sites) said Hoffman was guilty of "a crude and obvious" violation of the labor laws. The $67,000 penalty, he said, "reasonably helps to deter unlawful activity that both labor laws and immigration laws seek to prevent."
Joining Breyer were Justices John Paul Stevens (news - web sites), David Souter (news - web sites) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites).
The Supreme Court has already ruled that undocumented workers are protected by federal labor laws. Justices said that did not entitle them to back pay "for wages that could not lawfully have been earned and for a job obtained in the first instance by a criminal fraud."
Castro used a friend's identification to get a a minimum wage job operating a plant blender at Hoffman's plant in Paramount, Calif. He and three other employees were laid off in 1989 after they supported efforts to unionize the plant. He did not speak English, nor did half of the other plant workers, according to court records.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided 5-4 with Castro, who was fired for handing out union cards to fellow employees.
The Supreme Court's ruling overturned that.
The case is Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. National Labor Relations Board, 00-1595.
The logic of this decision seems twisted. A pleasant surprise but twisted logic.
OMG! I had to read that sentence three times in a row to make sure it actually said what I thought it said. Could it really be true that there is SOME shred of common sense left in this country???
The guy was fired in 1989. That's 13 years of back pay....
I guess it depends on what the defination of "is" is.
According to my understanding of The Federal Immigration and Nationality Act, Section 8 USC, it is illegal for a company to hire illegal aliens. So if that is true, how can Bush possibly argue his case that "penalties are needed to keep employers from wronging illegal workers"?
I don't understand it!!
Nor do I. It's unbelievable.
Call me a simpleton but I would have put a period after the word Americans. I was quite surprised to learn that the SC already ruled that undocumented workers are protected by federal law. If the Supreme Court doesn't comprehend the meaning of ILLEGAL, who do we turn to?
What's frightening is that the decision came very close to going the other way, emphazing the immediate need to appoint Conservative Judges.
All that means is that they must be paid a fair wage for work performed. If they are cheated, they must be paid as ordered by the court. They can collect on their way to the airport where they will be returned to their country of origin.
Understand that this was definitely a policy approved from the top, one that the Solicitor General was forced to make for political purposes.
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