Industry Group's Lawsuit Seeks To Kill Seattle’s Minimum Wage: Claims It Violates Their Free Speech — Hey, It Worked With Campaign Spending

Rally To Raise The Minimum Wage in New York City, October 2013. (Photo
by The All-Nite Images)

By Ian Millhiser
Last week, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) signed a bill that will eventually raise his city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. It took eight days for a lobbying group representing major employers like McDonald’s and Taco Bell to file a lawsuit asking the courts to repeal the legislation.

In a sensible world, this lawsuit would have no chance of prevailing. Many of its claims are frivolous — and comically so. The lobbying group argues, for example, that Seattle’s new minimum wage violates the First Amendment because “by increasing the labor costs of franchisees, the Ordinance will reduce the ability of franchisees to dedicate funding to the promotion of their businesses and brands.” In other words, the law requires businesses to spend money paying workers a living wage that they could otherwise spend on advertising, and this somehow violates the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. If this were actually what the Constitution required, then any law imposing costs on anyone would be unconstitutional, including all taxes. After all, every dollar paid in taxes is a dollar that can’t be spent to buy an ad promoting the deliciousness of the Big Mac.

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