Right-Wing Judge Bars $18 Minimum Wage From California’s 2022 Ballot

A Sacramento judge ruled Friday that an initiative to raise California’s minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2025 cannot appear on the state’s ballot this coming November, even though the campaign behind the proposal obtained more than enough signatures.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James Arguelles’ ruling stems from a dispute between the Living Wage Act campaign and the office of California’s Democratic Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who said county officials didn’t verify a sufficient number of signatures in time.

As Cal Matters reported Friday, “The minimum wage campaign argued that Weber’s office confused county election officials because she told them they had until July 13 to finish the count, based on the requirement that counties get 30 working days for signature verification after campaigns turn in their petitions.”

“Proponents collected 1 million signatures, but didn’t turn in signatures until May, Weber’s office said, making them late to start the clock,” the outlet explained. “By the June 30 deadline to qualify for this November’s ballot, several counties had not finished verifying signatures and the campaign fell short.”

The Living Wage Act campaign—whose lead backer, investor and anti-poverty activist Joe Sanberg, has characterized Weber’s decision as “an honest mistake”—opted to sue the secretary of state in a last-ditch bid to get the initiative on the ballot in November.

But Arguelles ultimately sided with Weber’s office and barred the popular proposal from the 2022 ballot after the California Restaurant Association and the California Business Roundtable—leading corporate lobbying groups in the state—pleaded with the judge to rule against the minimum wage proposition.

Campaigners pointed out Friday that Arguelles is the same judge who granted a months-long signature-gathering extension to proponents of a failed effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year.

In June 2020, former President Donald Trump selected Arguelles to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, but the Senate never advanced his nomination.

The ballot initiative proposed incrementally lifting California’s minimum wage to $18 an hour, starting with an increase to $16 next year.

California’s minimum wage is currently $14 an hour for businesses with 25 or fewer employees and $15 an hour for businesses with 26 or more employees. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator estimates that an adult with one child would have to make at least $44.18 an hour working full-time to meet essential needs in the state, where housing costs and other expenses are high and rising.

While the initiative has formally qualified for the November 2024 ballot, the campaigners argued that “workers cannot wait another two years for a raise.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.