Private prison company must face lawsuit alleging it ran forced labor camps, 5th Circuit rules
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A private prison company accused of forcing immigrant detainees to work for no more than $2 per day is not exempt from a ban on forced labor, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Louisiana said CoreCivic is not exempt from the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, Law360 reports.
“Judges are not legislators,” the appeals court said in a 2-1 decision. “Legislators write laws—judges faithfully interpret them. So if a party wishes to have its activities exempted from a statute, it must ask the legislature to enact such an exemption, not the judiciary.”