Cases & Decisions, Federal Court Cases

AILA and BOG Members Sue DOL Over New Prevailing Wage Rates

2/19/21 AILA Doc. No. 20101906. Business Immigration, H-1B & H-1B1 Specialty Occupation, Labor Certification (Permanent)
Individual and organizational plaintiffs, represented by AILA and members of AILA's Board of Governors, filed an amended complaint to stop the DOL final rule changing the prevailing wage rates. Follow this page for information on Purdue, et al., v. Scalia, et al. litigation.

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February 19, 2021

An amended complaint was filed to hold DOL’s “final rule unlawful and prevent the Defendants from implementing the new calculations for wage levels or otherwise implementing the final rule.” The complaint states, “The litigation and this Court’s resulting partial summary order granted against the Interim Final Rule (“IFR”) did not prevent the previous administration’s midnight haste to convert the IFR to a Final Rule. Strengthening Wage Protections for the Temporary and Permanent Employment of Certain Aliens in the United States, 86 Fed. Reg. 3608-01 (Jan. 14. 2021) (“final rule” or “rule”). While modified, Defendants re-imposed similarly drastic unlawful increases in prevailing wage levels that this Court and two other separate district courts previously set aside. The final rule, which is set to take effect May 14, 2021, suffers from the same substantive defects and new procedural defects as the previously vacated IFR. The substantive changes continue to be based on faulty, undocumented, and irrational economic assumptions that ignore the thousands of comments to the IFR, misapprehend the data behind its calculations, and do not account for the harms to plaintiffs. Neither iteration of the rules contains a reasoned explanation for instituting such an arbitrary change and both rules were promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act’s (“APA”) notice-and-comment requirements.”

December 14, 2020

A federal judge granted summary judgment against DOL’s interim final rule that changed the prevailing wage rates. The judge ordered DOL to reissue prevailing wage determinations that were issued under the rule. (Purdue University, et al., v. Scalia, et al., 12/14/20)

For more information, read AILA’s Press Release: Big Win on Pro Bono Suit Challenging Department of Labor’s Midnight Rule Changing Prevailing Wage Determinations

October 23, 2020

Seventeen individual and organizational plaintiffs, represented by AILA and members of AILA's Board of Governors, filed a complaint seeking an injunction to stop the DOL interim final rule changing the prevailing wage rates issued on 10/8/20. (Purdue, et al., v. Scalia, et al., 10/19/20)

On October 23, 2020, the plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary injunction requesting that:

“Based on the foregoing, the Court should enter a preliminarily injunction enjoining Defendants and the Department of Labor from implementing, applying, or enforcing the Interim Final Rule, 85 Fed. Reg. 63872, or any of the prevailing wage methodologies or prevailing wage rates under the Interim Final Rule, in its entirety.”

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