The Baltimore County Council on Monday night approved a $450,000 contract with an outside law firm to defend the county against a class-action lawsuit alleging the county violated federal and state labor laws by not paying minimum wage and overtime to work-release inmates.
Greenlit by a 7-0 vote, the county has hired the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough to serve as co-counsel on the federal case brought by an Essex man incarcerated at the Baltimore County Detention Center who participated in the detention center’s work-release program at the Cockeysville recycling center, operated by the county’s Department of Public Works.
Michael A. Scott, the plaintiff in the case, says he and others in the county detention center’s work-release program were paid a flat rate of $20 a day to work at the recycling center and were not granted overtime although the lawsuit asserts they often worked more than 57 hours a week.
“These types of arrangements come with a cost,” said Scott’s attorney Howard Hoffman, adding that Scott missed payments to his landlord. “What happens to the children that are left behind? What happens to the car payments?”
Courts have generally held that inmates are not considered employees protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act — but Hoffman has said this situation is “not an example of prison labor.” Scott and others participated in the county work-release program voluntarily, not as part of a criminal sentence or rehabilitation, he said.
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