Federal lawsuit alleges discrimination against Vietnamese women nail techs
Backed by Vietnamese American nail technicians and nail salon owners holding protest signs, including 'stop Asian hate,' Republican Assemblyman Tri Ta announced Monday morning the filing of a discrimination lawsuit outside of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Santa Ana.
'Earlier this year, our office received many concerns from Vietnamese American manicurists and nail salon owners,' Ta said at a news conference. 'Their lives were turned upside down overnight when the independent contractor status expired on January 1.'
'It is not just unfair, it is discrimination,' he added.
Licensed barbers, cosmetologists, estheticians and electrologists can still work as independent contractors under state labor law without being subjected to a rigorous test.
But exemptions under Assembly Bill 5 expired this year for manicurists.
The change has left manicurists and nail salon owners alike confused as to whether non-employees can continue renting booths for their businesses — a decades-long industry practice.
Ta, whose 70th Assembly District encompasses Little Saigon, said 82% of manicurists in the state are Vietnamese, with 85% of those being women.
The federal discrimination suit, filed on May 31, represents several Orange County nail salon businesses as well as individual manicurists.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and the heads of five state agencies and boards are named as defendants.
'This lawsuit seeks only one thing — to make sure that all professionals in the beauty industry are treated equally and to eliminate the obvious discrimination against the Vietnamese community,' the complaint reads.
Attorney Scott Wellman, who is litigating on behalf of the nail salon owners and manicurists, held up a copy of the complaint during the news conference. He claimed the equal protection rights of his clients under the U.S. Constitution are being violated by the lack of an exemption.
'This wrong has to be righted,' Wellman said.
The suit represents a change in strategy for those fighting on behalf of aggrieved manicurists and nail salon owners.
In February, Ta introduced Assembly Bill 504, which aimed to reinstate the exemption for manicurists, but later claimed the proposed legislation couldn't even get a hearing from the committee on labor and employment. He followed up in March by calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation into alleged racial discrimination codified in California labor law, before ultimately turning to federal court.
'These hardworking professionals deserve the same freedom to set their own hours, to choose their own clients, to rent their own booths and to run their own businesses on their own terms just like other peers in the beauty industry,' Ta said Monday.
Ta and the suit cite statistics from a UCLA Labor Center report on California's nail salon industry that was published last year. Co-authors of the report, though, have been publicly critical of Ta's efforts to have the exemption reinstated.
'As an industry predominantly consisting of Vietnamese and female manicurists, AB 5 protects the community from misclassification and labor violations that have long existed at the workplace so that they can receive the wages, benefits and protections that all workers deserve,' said Lisa Fu, executive director of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative and report co-author.
The report found that 80% of nail salon workers are considered low-wage earners, with 30% of manicurists in the state classified as self-employed, which is triple the national rate.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who authored the sunset provision in AB 5, previously told TimesOC that the nail salon industry has a long history of high misclassification rates that needed added guardrails for labor rights 'while still allowing individual business owners the ability to work as a sole proprietor and simply rent space from a salon.'
Manicurists who back the federal discrimination suit spoke out at Monday's press conference.
'I want to be able to continue to work as an independent contractor,' said Loan Ho. 'It gives me more flexibility. I have time to raise my children.'
Emily Micelli works out of Blu Nail Bar at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, which is the lead plaintiff in the suit. She has more than 20 years of experience as a nail technician and doesn't want to be a nail salon employee.
Micelli left the previous nail salon she worked out of when the owner wouldn't allow her to continue as an independent contractor.
'I cannot keep clients on my phone, make appointments and come up with my own custom design packages,' Micelli said after the news conference. 'I have to abide by the salon's rules. It will make me lose business.'
Micelli believes that while the law may be well-intended, it otherwise serves to discriminate against Vietnamese American women like herself.
'I know the law wants to protect us as workers,' she said, 'but being a W-2 [worker] is better for office workers not for people like us, who are artists. I'm actually an artist — a nail artist.'
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Time Magazine
5 minutes ago
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What Trump Has to Do With Texas Democrats Fleeing the State
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Jolanda Jones, one of the lawmakers who was in New York on Monday. 'Subpoenas from Texas don't work in New York, so he can't come and get us. Subpoenas in Texas don't work in Chicago. … He's putting up smoke and mirrors.' A refusal by Texas lawmakers to show up is a civil violation of legislative rules. As for his threat to remove the lawmakers, Abbott cited a nonbinding legal opinion issued by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton amid an partisan quorum dispute in 2021. Paxton suggested a court could determine that a legislator had forfeited their office. Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate, said on X that Democrats who 'try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.' The lawmakers who left declined to say how long they will hold out. 'The magic of a quorum break is you never telegraph the how long or what you're going to do,' said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who has served in the Legislature since 2001. 'We recognized when we got on the plane that we're in this for the long haul.' Texas House Democratic Caucus leader Gene Wu said his members 'will do whatever it takes' but added, 'What that looks like, we don't know.' Legislative walkouts often only delay passage of a bill, including in 2021 when many of the same Texas House Democrats left the state for 38 days to protest new voting restrictions. Once they returned, Republicans still passed that measure. Lawmakers cannot pass bills in the 150-member Texas House without at least two-thirds of them present. Democrats hold 62 of the seats in the majority-Republican chamber, and at least 51 left the state, said Josh Rush Nisenson, spokesperson for the House Democratic Caucus. Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows said the chamber would meet as planned on Monday afternoon. 'All options will be on the table,' he posted on X. The Texas Supreme Court held in 2021 that House leaders had the authority to 'physically compel the attendance' of missing members, but no Democrats were forcibly brought back to the state after warrants were served. Republicans answered by adopting $500 daily fines for lawmakers who don't show up for work as punishment. The governor, meanwhile, continues to make unsubstantiated claims that some lawmakers have committed felonies by soliciting money to pay for fines they could face for leaving the state to deny a quorum. The lack of a quorum would delay votes on disaster assistance and new warning systems in the wake of last month's catastrophic floods in Texas that killed at least 136 people. Democrats had called for votes on the flooding response before taking up redistricting and have criticized Republicans for not doing so. On Fox, Abbott attempted to turn that issue back on Democrats, suggesting their efforts to break a quorum would become the reason for a delayed flood response. 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