Workers advocate for a minimum wage increase at a 2022 rally in New York.Noam Galai/Getty

When the Fair Labor Standards Act signed into law in 1938, first establishing a national minimum wage, it came with an exception: employers could pay certain disabled workers less than the minimum wage. The federal exemption still stands, though many states are withdrawing their versions — and that pay can still be as little as 25 cents an hour.

25 states have since introduced or passed legislation to phase it out outdated practice. Defender of 14(c) certificate program often argue that the disabled workers it covers, most of whom have intellectual and developmental disabilities, simply wouldn’t get a job anywhere else.

A study published today in JAMA Health Forum of University of Pennsylvania researchers refute this argument. Its authors found that in two states — New Hampshire and Maryland — that banned the practice, employment rates for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as people who are autistic, either increased or did not change when employers were forced to pay them the same amount. salary.

Neurologist Mihir Kakara, the study’s lead author, says the finding “points to the fact that these people can work in equally paid, fully integrated jobs as their non-disabled peers, given the right resources.”

Many employers who pay disabled workers below the minimum wage use so-called “sheltered workshops”, which have also been criticized by disability advocatebecause they segregate disabled workers. Regardless of whether a state enforces the lower wage or not, workers with cognitive disabilities still work fewer hours overall and are paid less than those without cognitive disabilities.

Notably, New Hampshire had no disabled workers below the minimum wage at the time of the repeal, unlike Maryland — but employment rates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities still rose when the state legally knocked the exemption to the curb. The researchers theorize that “media coverage and debates surrounding repeal of Section 14(c) may encourage or signal to families and individuals with (intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities) previously out of the workforce to apply for job training.”

While the Biden Department of Labor was expected to introduce a rule to either make the program fairer or get rid of it entirely, it has yet to take action. Currently, in many states it is perfectly legal to pay a worker less than the minimum wage because they are in a protected class.