A Superior Court judge ruled against Disneyland Resort workers in a class-action lawsuit challenging the company’s exemption from an Anaheim living-wage law.
Passed by voters in 2018, Measure L requires hospitality businesses within the Anaheim Resort area to pay a tiered minimum wage topping at $18 an hour next year if they have tax rebate subsidy agreements with the city.
On Monday, Orange County Superior Court Judge William D. Claster granted a summary judgement in favor of the Disneyland Resort stating that a Disney expansion agreement passed by the city in 1996 didn’t meet the legal definition of a tax rebate subsidy under the living-wage law.
“The court is confronted with a narrow question: whether any of the agreements identified by the parties gives the Disney Defendants a right to a rebate of their taxes,” read Claster’s tentative Oct. 29 ruling. “Whether the city of Anaheim ‘subsidized’ the Disney Defendants in a colloquial sense is not an issue.”
Before going to trial, Claster ruled that the ’96 agreement, in which the city issued $510 million in bonds for resort-area infrastructure improvements in partnership with Disney’s $1.4-billion investment in Disney’s California Adventure, Downtown Disney and Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, didn’t constitute the tax refund, abatement or discount needed to trigger the living-wage law.
Anaheim continues to pay off bond debt, mostly through sales, property and transient occupancy taxes generated by the Disneyland Resort...
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