President Joe Biden’s initiative boosting the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour will face its biggest legal test during oral argument at a federal appeals court in Denver.
The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Wednesday is set to consider a recreational company’s challenge to Biden’s April 2021 order lifting the pay floor for federal contractors by about $4.
A court order blocking the wage hike would throw one of Biden’s most significant pro-worker policies—issued after Democrat-backed legislation to raise federal minimum pay failed in the Senate—into legal uncertainty.
A federal district court in Colorado rejected the recreational company’s request for a temporary injunction in January, holding that it was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims. But the Tenth Circuit agreed a month later to pause, while the appeal is pending, enforcement of the policy against recreational businesses that have a permit to operate on federal property.
The US Labor Department, which finalized a rule to implement the order in November 2021, estimated it would affect more than 500,000 companies, including 40,000 firms that provide concessions or recreational services pursuant to government permits.
Litigation is also ongoing in federal district court in two separate lawsuits brought by Republican-led states contesting the contractor pay...
On 23 March 2026, US President Donald Trump posted on a social media platform, Truth Social, that Washington and Tehran were engaged in productive negotiations. Within an hour, oil prices fell by n...