State high court rules $15 wage applies to Sea-Tac airport

SEATTLE – The $15 an hour minimum wage law passed by SeaTac residents two years ago does apply to workers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Washington’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a 5-4 decision, the court majority upheld Proposition 1 in its entirety, saying it can be enforced at the airport as well as in the surrounding city because there’s “been no showing that this law would interfere with airport operations.”

The ruling, overturning a lower court decision that said the airport was not subject to the city’s minimum wage law, is expected to affect some 4,700 people who are employed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport by contractors, concessionaires and car-rental agencies, according to proponents of the minimum wage law.

Voters in the city of SeaTac, a Seattle suburb, in November 2013 passed a law boosting the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The proposition’s backers had intended for the law to cover airport workers.

But opponents filed a lawsuit challenging the city’s power to dictate pay at Sea-Tac Airport, which is owned and operated by the Port of Seattle.

That lawsuit resulted in a December 2013 ruling by King County Superior Court Judge Andrea Darvas that the law couldn’t be enforced at the airport due to a decades-old state law giving the Port of Seattle exclusive jurisdiction over all operations at the airport.

SeaTac Committee for Good Jobs, the group that backed Proposition 1, appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in June 2014.

Thursday’s decision reversed Darvas’ ruling the law couldn’t be enforced at the airport.

The Court said the wage law could be “harmonized” with state law because the Port did not show the proposition would specifically interfere with airport operations.