Baltimore County settled a five-year-old lawsuit that former inmates in the county’s detention center filed over compensation for working in the waste and recycling center.

Officials signed the settlement late Wednesday, though County Attorney James Benjamin declined to provide a signed copy of it. A judge still has to approve it.

The inmates argue that they are entitled to receive the minimum wage.

The settlement provides the inmates who opted into the class-action lawsuit with $1.46 million in reparation funds for their labor at the Cockeysville recycling center. Baltimore County also pays the plaintiffs’ attorney fees, which amount to about $2.3 million.

The county already paid $4.5 million to a private law firm, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, to defend it in the case. The Baltimore County Council approved that expenditure, though it did so after the funds were spent.

It’s not known how much more in attorneys’ fees the county has spent on the case since late 2024, when the council approved the Nelson Mullins expenditure. That marked the fourth time the council approved extending the contract and increasing how much the law firm was paid.

All told, that adds up to at least $8.3 million.

Had the county paid the inmates the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour instead of $20 per day, it likely would have spent far less. The county discontinued the program after the lawsuit, so it no longer uses inmate labor at its recycling facility.

Under the settlement, $40,000 from the fund will directly benefit the lead plaintiff, Michael Scott; another $45,000 will be split among six named plaintiffs. The remainder will be divided up among 44 former inmates who worked at the recycling center.

Howard Hoffman, the former inmates’ attorney, also requested as part of the settlement that the county detention officers assist anyone currently incarcerated in the class with filling out paperwork to be included. He did not know if anyone in the class was still incarcerated, but said they should be compensated if they had been during the period when the inmates worked at the facility.

The inmates’ case has seen many twists and turns. Scott, the lead plaintiff, was released long ago, as were many of the other inmates.

Paying workers less for the same jobs is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But the question became whether Scott and his fellow workers were inmates or employees.

A federal judge ruled in 2023 that the Fair Labor Standards Act was intended to guarantee minimum living standards, which the inmates already received at the jail. The judge further deemed that the inmates’ work at the recycling facility served both economic and rehabilitative purposes.

Hoffman disagreed, saying the inmates received no “valuable job training” and worked as deeply discounted garbage sorters. He appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, where he prevailed. The appeals judges questioned both the rehabilitative element of the job training and whether Scott and his fellow inmates should have been classified as employees. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court.

“Congress may well not have had workers like Scott in mind when it enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act,” the judges wrote. “But ... it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.”

The county filed a petition seeking to have the nation’s highest court review the 4th Circuit’s decision. The Supreme Court declined.

Hoffman said the parties agreed in principle on the bulk of the settlement in April, but have been haggling over minor issues since then. He said that delaying tactics in recent months have enriched Nelson Mullins and delayed payments to his clients. For weeks, Hoffman said, he was waiting for a signature from Baltimore County’s chief administrative officer. For part of that time, he learned, she was out of town.

Last week, Hoffman filed an emergency order to compel the county to sign the agreement. After the judge ordered a response by 5 p.m. Wednesday, the county finally signed it.

The inmate case is only the latest to rack up substantial fees.

In 2024, the council approved spending $2.5 million more on legal fees for private attorneys on issues as varied as a redistricting map case, legal work for the Department of Aging, labor negotiations, and Public Information Act disclosures. In contrast, Anne Arundel County spent only $180,912 on legal fees in fiscal year 2024 and $410,136 in fiscal year 2023.

So far in 2025, excluding this settlement, the county has spent far less. According to fiscal notes filed with the council, the Office of Law has been authorized to spend up to $75,000 each on two firms — one to work on redistricting and the other to work on environmental matters. It also spent nearly $200,000 combined on legal fees for its outgoing inspector general and a private settlement in a lawsuit she filed against a former employee.