Baltimore County Fails to Nab Prisoner Wage Appeal Rehearing

The full Fourth Circuit won’t weigh in on a three-judge panel’s ruling giving incarcerated workers who earned $20 per day sorting recycling a new shot at their pay claims against Baltimore County, Md., the court said Thursday.

The county argued that the panel’s decision “drastically extends the reach” of the Fair Labor Standards Act and risks creating an “entirely new class of inmate ‘employees’” with repercussions far beyond the case itself. No judge called for a vote on whether to rehear the case, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said.

• Approximately 550 incarcerated workers allege in ...