In response to a lawsuit filed by SEIU, a federal judge has blocked the State of California from reducing the wages of home care workers by up to $2.00 per hour.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken issued an injunction on June 25 to halt the wage cuts, ordering the state to continue paying workers for its In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program up to $12.10 in wages and benefits. Without this injunction, tens of thousands of IHSS workers would have seen their wages shrink from $11.50 to $9.50 per hour beginning July 1, the first day of the state’s new fiscal year.

The injunction states that before California can make such cuts, it must first offer an analysis of how they would impact the efficiency, economy, quality, and accessibility of care (“State vows to pursue home care workers’ wage cuts,” Mercury News, June 26).

In a blog post cheering Wilken’s action, SEIU, which represents 250,000 of California’s 400,000 home care workers, said the wage cuts “would have forced thousands of homecare providers to leave their employment to seek living-wage jobs, forcing frail seniors and people with disabilities to enter nursing homes or other residential institutions” (“Judge Orders State to Halt Wage Cut for California Home Workers,” SEIU, June 25).

Those who have been following PHI’s reporting on this issue will note that the proposed wage cuts have had an on-again, off-again existence. In mid-May, the Obama administration initially indicated that the cuts would violate the terms of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) but then reversed that judgment less than two weeks later, after California voters rejected a series of fiscal ballot initiatives proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to remedy the state’s massive budget shortfall.

When Schwarzenegger responded by reviving the wage cuts as part of a broader package of cuts to state programs, SEIU launched a series of high-profile protests and filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the State of California and Fresno County from cutting home care worker wages and reducing care hours for seniors and people with disabilities. The suit alleges that the cuts would violate the federal Medicaid Law, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Rehabilitation Act.