CORRECTION: This article initially referenced this being a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case. The statute relative to this ruling is actually the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act. I apologize for any confusion.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday overturned a District Court ruling and reversed a three-decade precedent saying that the government can not use the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act to collect back wages owed to an individual by her employer who was working in the U.S. on an H-1B visa.
A copy of the ruling in the case of United States v. Bedi can be accessed by clicking here.
Vickram Bedi was the owner of a company who hired a woman from Iceland to be an account executive under the H-1B program. The woman’s employment with Bedi’s company, Datalink, did not go smoothly, as the Second Circuit put it in its ruling. Infrequent pay, “servant work” for Bedi and his mother, and criminal activity were just a few of the woman’s complaints. She filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, who ruled that Bedi owed the woman more than $237,000 in unpaid wages. Ultimately, that amount was raised to $341,693.03 — an amount that Bedi did not pay to the woman.
The government initiated an action under the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act to collect the back wages. The government alleged that the debt in question was owed to the United States because it was trying to collect the wages on the woman’s behalf.
A District Court ruled in favor of the government, ordering Bedi and Datalink to pay the money. But the decision was appealed, with the defendants arguing that the debt was not actually owed to the government; it was owed to the woman.
Parsing the definition of “debt” in the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act, the Second Circuit ruled that the debt in question was not owed to the government and that the statute can not be used to collect the unpaid wages on the woman’s behalf.
“Nothing in the legislative history indicates that Congress enacted the [Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act] to aid in the enforcement of federal labor laws or to promote compliance with other obligations that are regulated by the Government but owed to private parties,” the Appeals Court wrote. “While these could have been valid objectives of Congress, it is not the job of judges to effectively rewrite the statute to achieve them.”
CORRECTION: This article initially referenced this being a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case. The statute relative to this ruling is actually the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act. I apologize for any confusion.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday overturned a District Court ruling and reversed a three-decade precedent saying that the government can not use the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act to collect back wages owed to an individual by her employer who was working in the U.S. on an H-1B visa.
A copy of the ruling in the case of United States v. Bedi can be accessed by clicking here.
Vickram Bedi was the owner of a company who hired a woman from Iceland to be an account executive under the H-1B program. The woman’s employment with Bedi’s company, Datalink, did not go smoothly, as the Second Circuit put it in its ruling. Infrequent pay, “servant work” for Bedi and his mother, and criminal activity were just a few of the woman’s complaints. She filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, who ruled that Bedi owed the woman more than $237,000 in unpaid wages. Ultimately, that amount was raised to $341,693.03 — an amount that Bedi did not pay to the woman.
The government initiated an action under the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act to collect the back wages. The government alleged that the debt in question was owed to the United States because it was trying to collect the wages on the woman’s behalf.
A District Court ruled in favor of the government, ordering Bedi and Datalink to pay the money. But the decision was appealed, with the defendants arguing that the debt was not actually owed to the government; it was owed to the woman.
Parsing the definition of “debt” in the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act, the Second Circuit ruled that the debt in question was not owed to the government and that the statute can not be used to collect the unpaid wages on the woman’s behalf.
“Nothing in the legislative history indicates that Congress enacted the [Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act] to aid in the enforcement of federal labor laws or to promote compliance with other obligations that are regulated by the Government but owed to private parties,” the Appeals Court wrote. “While these could have been valid objectives of Congress, it is not the job of judges to effectively rewrite the statute to achieve them.”
