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711 F.2d 49

Docket No. 82-3722.

Donovan v. Miller Properties, Inc.

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

Decided Aug. 1, 1983.

Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1983-08-01

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“reasonable costs, as determined hy the Administrator [of the Wage and Hour Division], to the employer of furnishing such employee with board/lodging, or other facilities, if such board, lodging, or other facilities are customarily furnished by such employer to his employee.” (Emphasis added.) Cases at least since Williams v. lacksonville Terminal Co., 315 U.S. 386, 403-04 , 62 S.Ct. 659 , 86 L.Ed. 914 (1942), cite the”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 86 F. Supp. 2d 262 - Archie v. Grand Central Partnership, Inc.

Applies 29 U.S.C. § 203

Relies on Davis Bros. v. Donovan · Donovan v. Miller Properties, Inc.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Opinion by (per_curiam) · Decided 1983-08-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently July 2009

5 federal appellate ·

50198319902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1*50Ruth E. Peters, Patricia Saik, Dept, of Labor, Washington, D.C., for plaintiff-appellant.

¶2Power & McDonald, Thomas W. Power, Robert D. McDonald, Washington, D.C., for defendant-appellee.

¶3Before CLARK, Chief Judge, GEE and POLITZ, Circuit Judges.

¶4PER CURIAM:

¶5This brief discourse concerns two subjects near and dear to the hearts of many Americans: food and the minimum wage. The question we are asked to answer is when may food be a part of the minimum wage.

¶6Relevant to our determination are a statute, a regulation promulgated by the Secretary of Labor construing that statute, and the Secretary’s interpretation of his regulation.

¶7The statute is section 3(m) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 203(m), which allows an employer to credit toward its obligation to pay the minimum wage “the reasonable cost ... of furnishing [an] employee with board, lodging, or other facilities, if such board, lodging, or other facilities are customarily furnished by such employer to his employees.” The regulation is 29 C.F.R. § 531.30 (1982), which provides that board, lodging, or other facilities are “furnished” for purposes of section 3(m) only where the employee’s acceptance of them is “voluntary and uncoerced.” The Secretary’s interpretation of this regulation requires “employee choice”: Acceptance of a section 3(m) in-kind benefit is not “voluntary and uncoerced” unless the employee is regularly given the option of receiving his entire minimum wage in cash.

¶8Relying on this interpretation, the Secretary sued Miller Properties for violating its duty to pay the minimum wage. A stipulation of facts by the parties distilled the case into a single issue: whether the Secretary’s “employee choice” construction of 29 C.F.R. § 531.30 is valid.1 The district court found this construction inconsistent with the plain language of section 3(m) and entered judgment for Miller. 547 F.Supp. 785 (M.D.La. 1982). We affirm on the basis of Davis Bros, Inc. v. Donovan, 700 F.2d 1368 (11th Cir.1983). That court’s reasoning is adopted as the reasoning of our decision here.

¶9AFFIRMED.

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