The Greater Missouri Medical Pro-Care Providers H-1B case has been winding its way through the court system since 2006. The key facts are that an aggrieved H-1Bholder filed a Complaint with the Department of Labor alleging a multitude of H-1Bviolations. The Department of Labor’s AdministrativeReview Board ultimately issued a Decisionin January 2014. The ARB decision isone of the best written and comprehensive legal discussions of an H-1B employer’ssalary obligations that a practitioner will ever find.
One of the keyholdings concerns the statute of limitations for an employer’s H-1B violations. The ARB found that the DOL does not need tolimit its investigation to the single complaining H-1B employee. The DOL may expand its investigation to allH-1B employees; however “if the H-1B violation underlying the claim occurred morethan 12 months before a complaint was filed, any remedies for that violationare barred.” (Page 16, in theabove-linked decision).
The ARB’s decisioncontained a dissent by Deputy Chief Administrate Appeals Judge E. Cooper Brown. Judge Brown opined that the DOL’s investigativeauthority should be limited to the complaining H-1B employee. If Judge Brown’s opinion had held court itwould have significantly changed long-standing DOL investigative practice.
The plaintiff,Greater Missouri, sought federal review of the ARB decision hoping to convincethe federal court that Judge Brown’s dissent was the proper reading oflaw. Last week, the federal court deniedthe Greater Missouri petition, probably ending the eight and a half yearsaga.