Aubry

The Regents of the University of California (UC), using non-state-appropriated money, contracted with private companies to build subsidized married student and faculty/staff housing on university-owned land near, but not on, its Los Angeles campus (UCLA). UC did so to financially assist married students to attend, and faculty and staff to work at, UCLA, who otherwise could not do so because of high nearby housing costs. To keep the projects’ costs as low as possible, thus permitting the resulting subsidies to be large enough to achieve its goal, UC, a constitutionally autonomous entity generally exempt from state regulation (Cal. Const., art. IX, § 9), chose to permit its private contractors to pay their private employees less than the prevailing wage, which ordinarily applies to public projects. UC believed it could do so because the projects involved internal UC policy and the prevailing wage law (Lab. Code, § 1770 et seq.) was not of statewide concern.

However, the California Department of Industrial Relations (Department), authorized to decide when prevailing wages must be paid on public projects, ordered UC to compel its contractors to pay prevailing wages. The…