August 4, 2025
If your employer forced you to wait for up to two hours to ride a bus to and from a parking lot, but didn’t pay you for your travel time, wouldn’t you feel like your wages had been stolen? That is what’s at stake in Rojas, et al. v. F.R. General Contractors, Inc., et al. During construction of the MGM National Harbor resort and casino, the general contractor and subcontractors required their workers (many of whom are Latine) to ride a bus from a parking lot to a worksite 2.3 miles away and did not allow employees to park at the worksite. These employees were never paid for their travel time. In 2022, the Supreme Court of Maryland held in Amaya v. DGS Construction, a similar case that the Court heard together with Rojas, that such travel time can constitute compensable work under Maryland law. It then returned both cases to trial courts for further proceedings consistent with that ruling. After a jury trial in Rojas, however, the trial court ruled in favor of the employer, and the Appellate Court of Maryland upheld that decision. In June 2025, the Public Justice Center and CASA filed a brief calling on the Supreme Court of Maryland to again take up the case and correct the errors of the Appellate Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court of Maryland had returned the Rojas case for proceedings to determine “whether the workers were required to report to the parking area, whether the parking area was the employer’s premises or a prescribed workplace, or whether the workers were required to be on duty, and hence were engaged in hours of work as set forth by COMAR 09.12.41.10.” Following a trial, the lower court established a new evidentiary requirement that workers must prove that a parking site was the “sole means” of accessing a jobsite in order to be compensated for time spent reporting to a designated location and waiting for and riding an employer-mandated shuttle to a jobsite. The Appellate Court affirmed the decision, thereby allowing employers to avoid liability by arguing that workers could have accessed the site by alternative, even illegal or unsafe, means such as parking illegally or trespassing.
The PJC’s brief challenges this ruling, arguing that it directly contradicts the Supreme Court of Maryland’s decision in its earlier opinion in Amaya, which clarified that the controlling inquiry under Maryland wage laws is whether the employer requires employees to report to a designated location. Authored by Murnaghan Fellow Sahar Atassi, the amicus brief situates the Appellate Court’s error within the broader context of wage theft, particularly in industries that rely on workers who are immigrants, Black, Latine, and women. It describes the impact wage theft has on workers and their communities, keeping working families in poverty. Wage theft often targets people who have historically been subject to greater exploitation at work, with employers assuming that they are less likely to complain out of fear of retaliation. The brief illuminates how companies often utilize wage theft as a business model to cut their costs and gain unfair advantage over law-abiding competitors, while harming local economies. The brief explains how the Appellate Court’s decision would incentivize employers to adopt policies that maximize profits at the expense of workers. We hope that this brief will help safeguard Maryland laws that enable workers to hold employers accountable for wage theft.
Thank you to paralegal David Reische and administrative coordinator Becky Reynolds for their assistance with the brief. This brief is the latest in a series of briefs that the PJC and allies have filed in Rojas and Amaya as the cases progressed through Maryland courts over the years, building on appellate advocacy from former Murnaghan Fellows Dena Robinson, Olivia Sedwick, and Michael Abrams.
