Washington, DC, February 26, 2007--The Supreme Court Monday refused to rehear a worker immigration lawsuit filed against Mohawk Industries, rejecting a renewed appeal a year after sending it back to lower courts.
The justices last year remanded the lawsuit to a federal court so it could determine whether allegations that the company hired illegal immigrants and suppressed worker wages could proceed as a civil racketeering lawsuit. Last year's action gave the carpet and floor-coverings company a new chance to stop the worker lawsuit, filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act. But the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled the lawsuit could proceed against the company.
Mohawk, in its latest appeal, said the Eleventh Circuit ruling amounted to a "cramped misinterpretation" of the legal precedent the Supreme Court asked lower courts to use as guidance in the racketeering suit. "The Eleventh Circuit decision permits plaintiffs to proceed with racketeering suits based upon ordinary business conduct," the company said in its appeal.
Mohawk was sued in January 2004 by a group of current and former hourly workers. The company attempted to get the suit thrown out of a federal court, but first a trial court and then the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lawsuit could proceed, before the Supreme Court heard the first appeal last year and remanded it based on a decision in another case involving the RICO statute.
That outcome left unanswered a significant legal question presented by the Mohawk appeal on whether corporations, when working with a third-party contractor, meet the definition of an "enterprise" in federal racketeering laws. The case is Mohawk Industries v. Williams.
