High Court Review of Detainee Wage Case Threatens Legal Strategy

The US Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case on whether GEO Group Inc. can immediately seek appellate review of its immunity defense to escape forced labor claims from immigration detainees promises to reshape litigation strategies in other cases.

The justices’ review of this procedural question could ultimately resolve a split among eight federal circuit courts, five of which the private prison operator said bar immediate review of district judge orders blocking government contractors from raising a derivative sovereign immunity defense in litigation regarding their contracts.

A high court order mandating immediate circuit review of the legal defense, which allows government contractors to claim immunity that the US would have had if sued for the same actions, would benefit cases beyond the labor law context. But for detained immigrant workers, an additional procedural step in the litigation process would further extend the timeline to arguing the merits of their allegations in court, attorneys and prison labor scholars said.

This will “certainly” prolong and delay detainees’ “ability to achieve justice in these particular cases,” said Eunice Hyunhye Cho, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project who litigates cases involving immigrants in US detention centers.

“It is very clear that private companies that contract with governments do not have sovereign immunity, unless that conduct was actually dictated and controlled by the federal government,” Cho said. This petition itself was a “tactic” GEO mounted “to make it more difficult” for the detainees to have their arguments swiftly resolved, she said.

But GEO’s legal team said the high court petition was necessary to resolve the circuit divide, which would create a clearer legal path for litigants.

GEO maintains that its contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run detention facilities grants it derivative sovereign immunity from lawsuits, and it shouldn’t have to wait until later in the litigation process to get clarity on the issue. The operator is facing two classes consisting of approximately 60,000 people, accusing the company of unjust enrichment and violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

The circuit split undermines the “fundamental value” of the derivative sovereign immunity doctrine, and the “government’s ability to function suffers as much as the contractor,” it said in its petition to the high court.

Counsel for the detainees and GEO didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Political Landscape

The validity of the detainees’ allegations isn’t expected to receive any attention from the justices, court observers said.

However, the case could potentially generate public awareness regarding the privatization of the federal detention system and corporations profiting from the incarceration of immigrant detainees who haven’t been convicted of any crime, said Erin Hatton, a professor of sociology and prison labor at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014, accused GEO of forcing detainees at a Colorado facility to perform various jobs, including preparing food, operating the library, and doing laundry, or risk solitary confinement under a voluntary work program. They were paid just $1 per day, the suit said.

A district judge dismissed GEO’s bid to assert derivative sovereign immunity as a defense in 2022, and the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit last year held that the order isn’t subject to interlocutory appeal because the immunity issue “cannot be reviewed completely separate from the merits” arguments.

The high court’s review comes as the Trump administration carries out its pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, which involves detaining them for weeks or even months as they await immigration rulings—a significant financial benefit for detention operators, observers said.

GEO indicated in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that approximately 41.5% of its $2.4 billion in consolidated revenues generated in 2024 came from contracts with ICE.

“They’re not routinely subjected to public oversight,” said Hatton, who has written about coercive labor in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers. For private prison companies, the immunity lets them “distance themselves from responsibility and legal liability” and rely on detainees under their care for free labor, she said.

Legal Landscape

The case in Colorado is just one of several lawsuits currently being litigated across the US, and the question of whether state labor law applies to federal immigration detainees has been a novel issue.

Just this week, a federal judge asked New York’s highest court to clarify whether the state’s minimum wage law applies to immigrant detainees at a facility near Buffalo who earned $1 a day to work for private prison contractor Akima Global Services.

And the Washington Supreme Court ruled in a similar case in 2023 that the state’s minimum wage law applies to immigrant detainees working for GEO, following an inquiry from the Ninth Circuit.

Applying that ruling, a divided Ninth Circuit panel in January dismissed GEO’s bid to overturn a $23.2 million jury award over its practice of paying civil immigrant detainees $1 per day for work in detention facilities.

The majority also tossed GEO’s immunity claim, saying that the ICE contract doesn’t bar the company from complying with the state’s minimum wage requirements. GEO’s appeal to the full court for review remains pending.

The underlying issue in the case before the Supreme Court, however, concerns what legal and constitutional protections apply to prisoners’ or detainees’ labor.

Detained immigrants working for private contractors “are entitled to more than a dollar a day,” particularly “because most of them are not being held for committing any crime,” said Ruben Garcia, professor of law and co-director of the Workplace Law Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law.

Otherwise, the practice violates the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which “only has an exception for labor done after a conviction of a crime,” he said. Until the justices resolve the immunity issue, the question remains “whether or not there are labor violations going on in detention.”

The case is The GEO Group Inc. v. Menocal, U.S., No. 24-758, petition granted 6/2/25.