By Ashley Peoples
February 26, 2020
Texas has not raised its minimum wage in 10 years while 21 states raised theirs at the start of 2020.
According to an article published on March 5, 2019 by The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB), a preemption law over minimum wage was passed in Texas in 2003. This law mandates that a local government’s minimum wage cannot be over the federal minimum wage.
“There has been a trend to implement these minimum wage preemption laws across the nation in the last few years,” according to the article.
In the 86th Legislative Session, State Representative Ron Reynolds proposed bill HB194 which would have raised the minimum wage to $15 on Sept. 1, 2019. Five other bills were also proposed in the same session to raise it to $10.10 that would have been put into effect by now, but none of the bills were passed.
Minimum wage can be set by the states or the federal government; and the higher wage applies when there is a discrepancy between the two.
The federal minimum wage limit remains at $7.25 which was implemented in 2009. The last time Texas raised its minimum wage was in 2010 from $6.55.