DALLAS COUNTY, TX - Texas inmates working in the laundry of a state prison aren't entitled to earn at least the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, an appeals court has ruled.

Convicted sex offender Douglas R. Loving contended his job as a drying machine operator qualified him for protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act — meaning he should get minimum wage — because the act didn't specifically exempt prisoners.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that prisoners are not employees and not entitled to minimum wages. In Texas, inmates capable of working are expected to hold jobs but aren't paid, Texas prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.

"Compelling an inmate to work without pay does not violate the Constitution," a three-judge panel of the court said. "The failure of a state specifically to sentence an inmate to hard labor does not change this rule."

Loving, 54, serving a 20-year sentence from Dallas County for aggravated sexual assault of a child, argued in his lawsuit the state should credit his inmate trust fund with wages for his work. He's been in prison since 1992 and is now at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Smith Unit in Lamesa.

"The claim fails because Loving has no constitutional right to compensation," the judges ruled, upholding a lower court's decision that threw out the suit as frivolous.
The panel said it had ruled in similar cases where inmates working outside jails for private firms technically were employees and that inmates working inside a prison for a private firm were not.

"However, until today we have not expressly stated whether there is any (federal-required) employment relationship between the prison and its inmates working in and for the prison," the court said in a ruling Friday.

The panel also noted other federal appeals courts uniformly have held "prisoners doing prison work are not the prison's employees," and cited a recent decision from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled people "are not imprisoned for the purpose of enabling them to earn a living."

"The prison pays for their keep," the Chicago-based court said. "If it puts them to work, it is to offset some of the cost of keeping them, or to keep them out of mischief, or to ease their transition to the worked outside, or to equip them with skills and habits that will make them less likely to return to crime outside.

"None of these goals is compatible with federal regulation of their wage and hours."

The court noted the reason why federal law doesn't specifically make an exception for prisoners "is probably that the idea was too outlandish to occur to anyone when the legislation was under consideration by Congress."