Court Opinion

ID: 9465735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:54:15.008299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:20.440129
License: Public Domain

JAMES C. HILL, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring.
It is our duty in this as in other cases to ascertain, if possible, the content of a law which the Congress has enacted. Upon discovering that law, we are required to apply it to the facts of the case before us. The majority opinion in this case correctly accomplishes this. I concur, but, for myself, add the following remarks.
We are dealing with the law establishing minimum wages. The provisions with which we have wrestled have nothing to do with assuring minimum earnings for the waiters. 29 U.S.C.A. § 203(m) provides that a restaurant owner or operator must pay to each waiter 50 percent of the applicable minimum wage irrespective of how much earnings may be actually realized in tips. Thus, if after furnishing the capital, operating expenses, and know-how, and after assuming the business risks involved in establishing a restaurant, someone succeeds to the extent that the restaurant’s waiters earn far in excess of minimum wages, that entrepreneur must still pay a penalty for providing this employment equal to 50 percent of what the minimum wage would be if the waiters were not receiving any tips. As I view it, this expresses the conclusion by our Congress that an entrepreneur ought to be discouraged from providing job opportunities. The waiters in the case investigated here were young people for whom it is said that job opportunities are not great in our present economy. There must be some wisdom in discouraging the creation of good paying jobs for those people under these circumstances, or surely the Congress would not have enacted such legislation. I must confess to my own limitation which prevents me from fully understanding the wisdom inherent in this policy.
Nevertheless, it is the law. Therefore, I concur.