The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will not hear Baltimore County’s appeal in a case involving jail inmates who had worked at the county’s recycling center and earned $20 a day instead of the minimum wage.

The case hinges on whether the 550 inmates at the Baltimore County Detention Center were contract workers or employees.

Michael Scott, who was an inmate at the time, alleged in a suit against the county that the hours they worked and the jobs they did classified them as employees. As such, he contended that paying them as inmates was a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Scott filed suit in 2021; shortly after, the county discontinued the program.

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Baltimore County already has paid $4.55 million to Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, a private law firm, to defend the county against the suit. Four times, county attorneys have had to go before the Baltimore County Council and ask its members to approve more funds for this lawsuit as well as several others.

Last year, the county spent nearly $7 million in litigation funds — and lost many of those court battles. Some on the council raised concerns about the high fees, though they voted unanimously to approve them.

The county won the Scott case in 2023. But Scott’s lawyer, Howard Hoffman of the Hoffman Employment Group, appealed. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to determine whether the primary purpose of the program was rehabilitation and job training, or simply work. If the former, then the Fair Labor Standards Act may not apply.

“Congress may well not have had workers like Scott in mind when it enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act,” the judges wrote. “But ... it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.”

Meanwhile, the county appealed to the Supreme Court, hoping to get a final decision on the matter.

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County spokeswoman Erica Palmisano declined to comment because the litigation is ongoing.

It’s unclear what the outcome will be now as the appeals court sent the case back to the district level and the nation’s highest court declined to be the final arbiter. The case is set for trial Nov. 3, but the parties have scheduled a mediation April 14 with a U.S. magistrate judge.

Hoffman said it’s unclear what will happen, as many motions on both sides will be filed between now and the upcoming dates.

“We would like to see it settle,” he said, “but we do not believe the current administration is serious about settlement.”