Opinion ID: 2095393
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Impact of Hoffman

Text: It was against this federal statutory backdrop that the United States Supreme Court decided Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v NLRB (535 US 137 [2002]). The issue was whether an illegal alien who, in violation of IRCA, gained employment by presenting false work authorization documents could be awarded back pay by the NLRB after the worker was impermissibly terminated for engaging in union-organizing activities. The Supreme Court concluded that such an award was prohibited because it would conflict with the purpose of IRCA. The Court observed that [u]nder the IRCA regime, it is impossible for an undocumented alien to obtain employment in the United States without some party directly contravening explicit congressional policies. Either the undocumented alien tenders fraudulent identification . . . or the employer knowingly hires the undocumented alien in direct contradiction of its IRCA obligations ( id. at 148). The Court emphasized that the salient factor in the case was that Congress has expressly made it criminally punishable for an alien to obtain employment with false documents and that the alien had, in fact, committed this crime ( id. at 149). Thus, the Court determined that awarding backpay in a case like this not only trivializes the immigration laws, it also condones and encourages future violations because the alien would qualify for an NLRB award only by remaining inside the United States illegally and could not mitigate damages . . . without triggering new IRCA violations, either by tendering false documents to employers or by finding employers willing to ignore IRCA and hire illegal workers ( id. at 150-151). The implications of Hoffman underlie the controversies in the two appeals before this Court. The main thrust of defendants' arguments is that IRCA, as construed by Hoffman, precludes an undocumented alien from recovering lost wages in a state personal injury action. According to defendants, such an award is a penalty upon the employer that is expressly preempted by IRCA, specifically 8 USC § 1324a (h) (2). Defendants also assert that the doctrine of field preemption prohibits an award of past or future earnings because the federal government has exclusive authority to regulate immigration and Congress has exercised that power by enacting the comprehensive schemes established in the INA and IRCA. Finally, defendants claim that permitting an undocumented alien to recover lost wages is in contravention of the purposes and objectives of IRCA in that it condones past transgressions of immigration laws and encourages future violations. Joined by the Attorney General as intervenor, plaintiffs argue that an undocumented alien should be allowed to recover for earning capacity lost as a result of defendants' failure to adhere to the workplace safety requirements established in the state Labor Law. The primary rationale for their conclusion that IRCA does not preempt state law is that precluding a lost wages claim would make it more financially attractive to hire illegal aliens, thereby undercutting the central goal of the federal act, and would provide less of an incentive to comply with state labor requirements, contrary to the purposes of Labor Law §§ 200, 240 (1) and § 241 (6). Plaintiffs and the Attorney General also contend that the doctrines of express and field preemption are inapplicable because neither the text of IRCA nor its legislative history indicates that Congress intended to affect workplace protections provided by the states. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the parties' arguments, we first must examine principles of federal preemption derived from the United States Constitution.