Labor Law -- 2016



District of Columbia v. U.S. Dep't of Labor   (D.C. Circuit)

Davis Bacon Act does not apply to private construction projects

The NAM filed an amicus brief in a labor litigation lawsuit to oppose the Department of Labor’s (DOL) application of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires “prevailing wages” for construction workers on public buildings or public works projects funded by the federal or D.C. government, to a private construction project. This is an appeal after DOL ruled that the City Center DC project was subject to the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act. If left unchecked, the DOL’s attempt to apply the Davis-Bacon Act to the private construction industry would have had a significant and potentially negative impact on private industry, the government and the economy. The NAM’s brief argued that DOL’s application of the Davis-Bacon Act to a private construction project was contrary to the language of the Act and that it was an unprecedented attempt to expand the scope of the Davis-Bacon Act into the private construction industry. The court applied common sense reasoning to reject DOL’s expansion of federal law.


Related Documents:
NAM brief  (March 11, 2015)