by Mike Hall, Mar 22, 2007

It is just amazing how adamant some people—who probably make a pretty good living—are about not giving workers at the bottom of the wage ladder a chance to climb up a rung or two with a raise in the minimum wage.

Take Montana, where this week the state Supreme Court threw out a challenge to the state’s new minimum wage law that was approved by 73 percent of the voters last fall. That ballot initiative (I-151) raises the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 an hour—not enough to trade in the ol’ Chevy S-10 for a Lexus, but enough to help with the grocery bill or the rent.

The fight against the $1-an-hour raise was led by two groups with a pair of pretty clunky names, Montanans for Equal Application of Initiative Laws and the Coalition Against Continual Price Increases No on I-151—backed primarily by the Montana Chamber of Commerce and the Montana Restaurant Association, according to news reports.

Shortly before the Nov. 7 election, Montanans for Equal Application of Initiative Laws filed suit, claiming some of the signatures on the petition to put the initiative on the ballot were not gathered legally.

Those signatures were certified by the secretary of state in July and the suit was filed two months past the challenge deadline. A state judge on Nov. 3 said the suit was too late. But that didn’t stop them. On to the state Supreme Court they went—after all, $6.15 an hour is such an economic abomination it must be stopped and forget about the 73 percent of Montanans who support the boost in the minimum wage, what do they know?

It wasn’t a tough call for the state Supreme Court. In this week’s decision, Justice James C. Nelson wrote:

Because of their own lack of diligence in mounting their challenge in a timely manner, the opponents simply did not begin their litigation in sufficient time….We agree with the State’s and with Raise Montana’s arguments that after a majority of the Montana electorate have voted to support an initiative, it’s absurd for the State and the courts to be tied up with the question of whether five percent of Montana voters had wanted it on the ballot.

In a “Case Closed!” posting on their website, Raise Montana, the coalition of community, union, faith and other groups that lead the charge to pass the wage initiative, writes:

This brings to an end the arduous and costly Montana legal case…[that cost] ongoing legal expenses, countless volunteers and supporters were inconvenienced, deposed and questioned and thousands of minimum wage workers no doubt wondered about the outcome of this case on their pocketbooks.

Montana was one of six states where voters last fall approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage. In addition, as congressional Republicans continue their decade-long roadblock to raising the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, 12 state legislatures approved minimum wage increases last year and soon New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) will sign legislation to boost the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.50 over the next two years. In February, a minimum wage increase was signed into law in Iowa.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article | Comments (0)