The California Courts of Appeal recently upheld a Los Angeles city ordinance that required hotels to pass along "service charges" charged to guests to their employees who performed the services. The ordinance originated out of a concern expressed by the city council that hotel guests were no longer leaving gratuities for hotel employees because the guests believed that the mandatory service charges were being paid to the employees. In actuality, only a few hotels gave any portion of the service charges to their employees. The low wages paid by the hotels to their employees combined with the lack of any separate income from tips meant that the employees were not earning a livable wage. The ordinance in question only affected a small number of hotels along a business corridor near Los Angeles International Airport. Despite opposition from the hotels, the court found that the hotels were benefitting from the corridor's business designation, and the regulation was rationally related to improving the welfare of workers in that area. The holding can be found in Garcia v. Four Points Sharaton LAX (2010).