In 2015, the city council of Birmingham, Alabama enacted an ordinance establishing a local minimum wage of $10.10 an hour—a significant raise for the city’s low-income workers from the federal floor of $7.25. The ordinance proved short-lived. Within months, the Alabama legislature had passed and the governor signed statewide preemption legislation nullifying all local wage regulations. Marnika Lewis, a twenty-three-year-old mother and employee of the Moe’s Southwest Grill burrito chain, is among several plaintiffs challenging the Alabama preemption statute, HB 174, as unconstitutional and racially discriminatory. “[T]he legislature and the governor,” Lewis complains, have “stolen my raise.”

* Assistant Professor of Law and History, Vanderbilt University; J.D., Ph.D., Stanford University.