California City’s Hospital Worker Covid Pay Law Upheld on Appeal

Culver City’s now-lapsed “hero pay” law requiring Southern California Healthcare System Inc. to pay certain hospital workers an extra $5 per hour during the coronavirus pandemic’s second summer was constitutional, the Ninth Circuit said Wednesday.

The hospital system, which does business as Southern California Hospital at Culver City, unsuccessfully argued that the law ran afoul of the federal and state constitutions’ equal protection and contracts clauses and that the National Labor Relations Act preempted the city ordinance, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in an unpublished opinion.

The NLRA didn’t preempt the local law because ...