High Court to Enter Illegal Worker Debate in Mohaw

Washington, DC, April 20, 2006--According to an article in the National Law Journal, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a case involving Mohawk Industries and undocumented workers—and decide if RICO laws apply. The article notes that in 1996 Congress expanded the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to include violations of federal immigration law. This month the justices will decide if a corporation accused of systematically recruiting and hiring illegal workers qualifies as an "enterprise" under RICO. In Mohawk Industries v. Williams, No. 05-465, a class action was brought against the carpet firm, alleging the hiring and subsequent concealment of illegal immigrants. The lawsuit was brought by Howard Foster of Johnson & Bell in Chicago, a man “who has pioneered the use of RICO on behalf of workers who lost jobs or had wages artificially depressed because of their employers' alleged hiring and concealment of illegal immigrants,” the article said. The legal journal article said further that Mohawk in its alleged actions was found by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to be an enterprise that would indeed fall under RICO. The carpet firm hopes for a reversal of that ruling. Mohawk will argue, the article says, that the circuit court’s ruling would allow the use of RICO statutes in all manner of civil cases involving corporations, and that, in essence, is what Mohawk’s counsel, Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin in Washington, is likely to maintain. Mohawk, the National Law Journal article says, has the support of several business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The article goes on to say that the Bush administration and the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys are supporting the circuit court’s position. On the one hand, Mohawk and its supporters say use of RICO statutes has gone too far. On the other hand, their opponents say the high court can’t just exercise a ‘judicial veto’ of Congress’ deliberate addition of the hiring of illegal aliens to the RICO act, or grant to all chartered corporations unique immunity from those laws. The article notes that G. Robert Blakey of the University of Notre Dame Law School, who helped fashion RICO laws, says Congress and the court have several times rejected the notion that RICO applies only to ‘organized crime.’ Nor, he says, would it seem fruitful to argue that corporate employers alone should be exempt from RICO. "There's been a total collapse of public enforcement against employers," Blakey is quoted saying, and he adds that if the Supreme Court buys into Mohawk’s argument, "It would frustrate exactly what Congress intended in 1996, and then there'd be no enforcement."