Sponsor
Alice Costandina Titus
Representative · D-NV
Representative · D-NV
Official title: To amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide for an increase to the minimum wage, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 29, 2025 by Alice Costandina Titus · Last progress May 29, 2025
The bill raises wages and expands supports and enforcement for low-income workers and vulnerable youth—improving pay, tips protections, and benefits—while shifting higher labor and fiscal costs onto businesses, consumers, and taxpayers and creating some legal and administrative risks that could delay or complicate implementation.
Millions of low-wage workers (hourly, entry-level, and many currently paid at the federal floor) receive phased increases to a $17 federal minimum and future increases indexed to median wages, preserving purchasing power over time.
Tipped workers get a rising employer-paid base wage (stepped increases to match the regular minimum) plus statutory protections banning employers from keeping tips and forbidding tip-processing costs taken from tips, improving pay certainty and tip integrity.
Phased, multi-year implementation schedules give employers time to adjust hiring, training, and budgets, reducing the risk of sudden disruption to workplaces and local labor markets.
Higher mandated wages raise labor costs for small businesses and labor-intensive employers, which could lead to higher consumer prices, reduced hours, fewer entry-level hires, automation, or layoffs—harming inexperienced workers and local economies.
A likely drafting error in Section 6 that replaces substantive text in 29 U.S.C. §214(e)(2) with ',200' risks making the statute nonsensical, creating legal uncertainty, enforcement gaps, and costly litigation for employers and workers.
Indexing the federal minimum to median wages risks embedding inflationary growth in the wage floor if median wage gains largely reflect inflation rather than productivity, increasing long-term costs for businesses, consumers, and taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Phases federal minimum wage to $17.00 and indexes it, phases out subminimum pay categories, raises tipped-worker base pay, protects WHD investigators, and expands the EITC.
Raises the federal minimum wage in phases to $17.00 within two years and creates a mechanism for annual automatic increases tied to median wages; phases out special subminimum pay categories (youth, student-learner, full-time student, and 14(c) special certificates) over 36 months; increases base pay requirements for tipped workers and bans employer retention of tips. It also protects Wage and Hour Division investigators from RIF-based removal, authorizes grants to state/local/Tribal governments for wage-law enforcement, creates a hospitality-industry advisory committee, and expands and raises the Earned Income Tax Credit (effective for tax years after 2025). A separate provision replaces text in an existing statute with the literal string ",200", a substantive statutory edit with unclear effect.