ATLANTA (AP) — A federal appeals court is being asked to toss a lawsuit that had accused Alabama lawmakers of racially discrimination due to a law that blocked the majority-black city of Birmingham from raising its minimum wage.

At issue in arguments scheduled Tuesday before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a 2016 statute requiring every city in Alabama to have the same minimum wage. Lawmakers passed the law after Birmingham’s city council voted to increase the city’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

The state law effectively nullified the planned increase.

Fast food workers and civil rights groups sued, accusing the Legislature of racial discrimination. They argued that the state law targeted a mostly African American city and would disproportionately impact black workers.

State officials say the law is race neutral and similar to measures passed by nearly two dozen other states.

A panel of 11th Circuit judges
last year
sided with the workers and civil rights groups, reversing a judge’s decision to dismiss their lawsuit. The court said that “plaintiffs have stated a plausible claim that the Minimum Wage Act had the purpose and effect of depriving Birmingham’s black citizens equal economic opportunities on the basis of race.”

State officials asked the appeals court to throw out that decision and reconsider the case with a hearing before all of the court’s judges. The 11th Circuit
granted that request in January
.

Attorneys for Alabama also argue that the lawsuit wrongly names the state attorney general as a defendant.