SEATTLE (AP) — A new federal lawsuit says sexual predators confined to Washington’s Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island should be paid the minimum wage for work they perform there.
Gordon Michael Strauss filed the lawsuit this week on behalf of an estimated 100 residents of the commitment center. The 59-year-old Strauss was convicted of rape in 1987 and has been involuntarily committed since he finished his prison sentence in 1998.
Strauss works as a clerical assistant at the center’s library. His lawyers argue that under the Fair Labor Standards Act, he and other residents employed by the center must be paid minimum wage. They say that while prison inmates don’t have to be paid minimum wage for work they do, the center is a treatment facility — not a prison.
A spokesman for the state Department of Social and Health Services, which runs the center, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.
