The problem isn't just the charges they face, which often carry legislatively mandated minimum sentences or added time for things like using a gun or being a gang member.
That's a disgrace, and it's a direct legacy of Florida's post-Confederate history, which included an 1868 state constitution that stripped felons of voting rights and mandated minimum education requirements for first-time voters, a measure that affected newly freed slaves disproportionately.
This year's financial report was the focus of particular attention because agency officials had already said the insurance fund's reserves would, for the first time, fall below a Congressionally mandated minimum of 2percentt.
Once the mandate does go into effect, businesses with 50 or more full-time employees will be required either to provide a health plan that meets federally mandated "minimum required value" guidelines or pay fees.
The specific question is whether Congress may impose on the states this entitlement program of its own design, with mandated minimums for leave time, and then enforce it by permitting private suits for money damages against the states.
The federally mandated minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 since June 2009.
That's $1.75 more than the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, and on par with the mandated minimum wage in at least 20 states.
The US has a federally mandated minimum age of 18 for smoking tobacco.
Teenagers, however, represent only a fraction of workers who would benefit from a higher minimum wage, argue proponents of increasing the federally mandated minimum.
Hotel workers will be major beneficiaries of a new law that sets the minimum wage in New Orleans one dollar above the federally mandated minimum.
Few fast-food business pay their employees more than the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
