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In May, the U.S. Department of Labor filed lawsuits against Mar-Jac Poultry of Alabama and Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, accusing the companies of utilizing “oppressive child labor” and violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Five months later, both cases are still working their way through the court system, with Hyundai and Mar-Jac Poultry attempting to dismiss the claims with varying degrees of success. Of course, even if neither case is successfully dismissed, the cases rely on fairly ambitious interpretations of the FLSA which may falter under judicial scrutiny.
While denying a request for a preliminary injunction against Mar-Jac Poultry in July, Judge L. Scott Coogler expressed some skepticism of the Department of Labor’s case, criticizing their proposed “‘appearance and mannerisms’ test” and questioning whether the children at issue were actually engaged in prohibited activity.
Shortly after the initial claim was filed, Mar-Jac Poultry responded with a counterclaim seeking “at least $19,989,381.79” in compensation for alleged damages from the Department of Labor’s investigation.
The Department of Labor moved to dismiss Mar-Jac’s counterclaims in September, claiming the company didn’t have any legal right to file the counterclaim in the first place. Under the Federal Torts Claims Act, the Department of Labor’s lawyers argued, federal agencies enjoy sovereign immunity protecting them from “any claim arising out of … interference with contract rights.”
The memorandum in support of the motion to dismiss also notes that “Mar-Jac fails to adequately assert an actionable duty under Alabama law,” and that they improperly treated acting secretary of labor Julie Su as the counter-defendant, instead of the United States as the FTCA requires.
A couple of weeks after the Department of Labor sought to dismiss the counterclaim, one of Mar-Jac’s lawyers filed for “dismissal without prejudice of its Counterclaim.” The court formally dismissed it in mid-November.
Assigned to a magistrate judge in August, the case against Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, LLC; SMART Alabama, LLC; and Best Practice Service, LLC has also stalled as the companies repeatedly seek to dismiss it entirely.
The first round of motions to dismiss was rendered moot after the Department of Labor amended its complaint in September.
The amended complaint focuses on a 13-year-old girl who worked “up to 50 to 60 hours per week” at SMART’s facility in Luverne. According to the Department of Labor, the girl began working there with documents under one name, but those documents were eventually rejected and she provided documents for another name.
After this switcheroo, she was paid under the second name but her official name badge still used the first one. Despite this, the underage employee was only identified as such after “[failing] to return home after work” when the “investigation triggered an AMBER alert.” She was “eventually found in Georgia with an adult male coworker from SMART.”
Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama’s motion to dismiss focuses on the complaint’s supposed lack of “sufficient likelihood of future injury,” as well as criticizing “vague, unspecified allegations” and “failure to state a claim.” And, similarly to Judge Coogler’s opinion in the Mar-Jac case, one SMART filing says “appearance alone is not sufficient to establish SMART should have known.”
Perhaps the boldest legal claim the companies have made is that “Su’s service as Acting Secretary of Labor is unconstitutional.” Republicans have repeatedly criticized her over year-long tenure as acting secretary without Senate confirmation, but last year the Government Accountability Office concluded “Ms. Su is lawfully serving as the Acting Secretary.”
The DOL’s response to the new motions to dismiss reads in part: “In the First Amended Complaint, the Acting Secretary asks who bears the responsibility for this child labor violation. The defendants in this case, HMMA, SMART Alabama, LLC (‘SMART’) and Best Practice Service, LLC (‘BPS’), have answered emphatically: Not us!”
While the cases have managed to survive legal challenges thus far, the fate of both cases after the presidential transition also remains unclear. Su repeatedly drew criticism from Republicans and the business community for some of her decisions as acting secretary. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville voted against her confirmation and called her “too radical to be Labor Secretary.”
Su’s likely replacement, Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, was recommended by Teamsters president Sean O’Brien as a “champion for the American worker,” but Republicans in several states, including Alabama, have sought to loosen child labor laws in recent years.
So with the U.S. government frequently changing its positions in lawsuits when a new president takes the oath of office, it remains possible that both cases could be voluntarily dismissed at the start of next year.
