In Georgia, a Rare Bipartisan Push for Disability Rights

Georgia could become the next state to end the subminimum wage for disabled people, a widespread and now widely opposed exception to minimum wage laws that extends to some 40,000 workers with disabilities—and the first state where such an initiative would be led by Republicans. 16 states have passed bills to end or reform the practice; in its last legislative session, which ended in March, Georgia’s state House passed what may be the seventeenth. It’s a bill that legislators are likely to pick back up when the state’s next legislative session begins in January 2025.

Georgia’s politics are fractious, with attacks by state Republicans on LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights driving divisions with state Democrats. Georgia Republicans hold majorities in both the state Senate and House of Representatives. Yet the bill to end subminimum wage in Georgia isn’t completely partisan. The bill’s lead sponsor is GOP state Rep. Sharon Cooper, who said at a committee hearing that she “just couldn’t believe that we are still allowing” the subminimum wage. One Democratic representative is co-sponsoring the bill, and none opposed its passage through the state House.

By contrast, multiple attempts to appeal the subminimum wage law at the federal level have stalled, most recently in 2023. When the United States established a federal minimum wage in 1938, it made an exception for disabled workers, allowing employers to pay them less than minimum wage—some just 22 cents an hour—through a certificate system. Many such certificate holders also operate sheltered workshops, effectively segregated workplaces that often exclusively hire disabled people earning subminimum wages, most with intellectual and developmental disabilities. There are currently just eight of these certificate holders in Georgia as of 2024, each employing as few as four to as many as 77 disabled workers.

“It frustrates me to see that a number of these sheltered workshops have executive directors or CEOs that make five-, six-figure salaries while paying people with disabilities pennies per hour,” said Dom Kelly, CEO of nonprofit New Disabled South, who also noted that the governmental entity Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities has led the charge in advocating for the change.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/georgia-republicans-bipartisan-disability-workers-sub-minimum-wage/