Georgia Court Upholds Deported Worker’s Right To Receive Workers’ Compensation

IMMIGRANTS & EMPLOYMENT

Immigrants' Employment Rights and Remedies

GEORGIA COURT UPHOLDS DEPORTED WORKER’S RIGHT TO RECEIVE WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 18, No. 5, August 9, 2004

An appellate court in Georgia has rejected an employer’s argument that Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, 122 S. Ct. 1275 (2002), precludes a worker who was seriously injured while working in the United States, but who was deported years later, from collecting workers’ compensation. (For a summary of the Hoffman decision, see “Supreme Court Bars Undocumented Worker from Receiving Back Pay Remedy for Unlawful Firing,” Immigrants’ Rights Update, Apr. 12, 2002, p. 10.)

The employer, Wet Walls, Inc., began paying the worker, Saul Ledezma, temporary total disability (TTD) benefits after he injured his back and became partially paralyzed while working for Wet Walls in 1989. In 1996, immigration authorities detained Ledezma and deported him from the U.S. After he was deported, Ledezma filed a claim for resumption of TTD benefits, as well as for a lump sum payment of permanent partial disability (PPD) benefits.

The State Board of Workers’ Compensation administrative law judge ordered Wet Walls to pay Ledezma both TTD and PPD benefits. Wet Walls appealed to the workers’ compensation board’s appellate division, which affirmed the award of TTD benefits. The appellate division found, however, that Ledezma was not entitled to PPD benefits because his entitlement to TTD benefits precluded such an award under Georgia’s workers’ compensation statute. Wet Walls subsequently appealed to the state superior court, which affirmed the original ruling made by the workers’ compensation board. Wet Walls appealed once again, and the case went before the Georgia Court of Appeals.

Wet Walls argued that requiring it to pay benefits to a non–U.S. citizen who is incapable of working in the U.S. “contravenes the doctrine set forth in Hoffman Plastic Compounds.” The court of appeals characterized Wet Walls’ argument as “not entirely clear.” The court found that “[b]y contending, albeit indirectly, that this Court is bound by Hoffman, the employer seems to suggest that federal law preempts state law in this regard. This argument is not well-founded.” Recognizing that the issue of whether Hoffman preempts state workers’ compensation laws is a question of first impression in Georgia, the court relied on other state courts that found no conflict between the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which requires that employers verify the employment eligibility of all new hires and provides for sanctions against employers that fail to comply adequately with this requirement, and state workers’ compensation statutes that do not prohibit undocumented workers from receiving benefits.

Wet Walls set forth two additional arguments that it should not be made to pay Ledezma workers’ compensation. It contended that, because under IRCA it cannot re-employ Ledezma, it should be permitted to stop paying him income benefits. Wet Walls also argued that requiring it to pay benefits to a deported immigrant, who is incapable of working in the U.S., violates the right of equal protection under the law. The court of appeals rejected both of Wet Walls’ additional arguments as lacking merit, given that since Ledezma has been deemed “totally disabled and unable to work,” it is his physical condition and not IRCA or the fact that he has been deported that renders him incapable of working.

The court of appeals did, however, rule in favor of Wet Walls as to Ledezma’s claim for PPD benefits for the time he was incarcerated by immigration authorities. In doing so, it agreed with the reasoning of the workers’ compensation board’s appellate division that Ledezma is not entitled to PPD benefits because Georgia law precludes the payment of PPD benefits while an employee is entitled to TTD benefits. On appeal to the workers’ compensation board’s appellate division, Ledezma had argued that since he was no longer receiving TTD benefits at the time he was incarcerated, the employer was required to commence payment of PPD benefits. The court of appeals disagreed with Ledezma, finding that Georgia law conditions payment of benefits on whether an employee is entitled to benefits, not whether an employee is receiving compensation. The court pointed out that Ledezma had been totally disabled from employment since his injury, and thus he had been entitled to receive TTD benefits since that date. It therefore concluded that “[t]he only reason he has not received benefits is because of his incarceration. And we see no reason to require an employer to commence PPD benefits when an employee is incarcerated because to do so might provide a windfall to the employee.”

Wet Walls has filed an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Wet Walls, Inc., et. al. v. Ledezma, 2004 Ga. App. LEXIS 454 (Ga. Ct. App. Mar. 30, 2004).