Seattle Hotel Insurance Mandate Defended by Cities, Professors

Seattle’s effort to defend its hotel worker insurance mandate from a challenge in the Ninth Circuit got a boost from regulators in several large cities and a group of law professors, who argued the law is a valuable protection for vulnerable workers that doesn’t interfere with the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

A collection of cities and counties—including San Francisco, Chicago, and Austin, Texas—defended the Seattle law in a brief filed Wednesday, telling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the law is substantially similar to a San Francisco ordinance that the court upheld in the ...