An attorney for fast-food workers, black lawmakers and civil rights groups urged a three-judge federal appeals court today to reinstate their lawsuit challenging an Alabama law that blocked a minimum wage increase in Birmingham.

The judges from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals questioned plaintiffs' attorney Barbara Chisholm and state attorney Will Parker for about 40 minutes this morning and did not indicate when they would rule on whether to send the case back to the district court.

The Alabama Legislature passed a law in 2016 blocking cities from setting their own minimum wages. The Republican majority in the Legislature passed the bill just in time to block the Birmingham City Council's decision to set a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour. The Legislative Black Caucus opposed the bill and is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in 2016.

The lawsuit claims the law is racially discriminatory and violates equal protection, among other claims.

Birmingham would have been the first Alabama city to set its own minimum wage. Alabama does not have a state minimum wage, so employers follow the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, last raised in 2009.

Birmingham residents and fast food workers, attorneys in the case and others held a rally outside the federal courthouse after today's hearing.

Orrie Johnson of Birmingham read a statement about his efforts to make ends meet and help take care of his disabled mother on his $8 an hour job at Burger King. Johnson said he's been involved in the fight to raise the minimum wage for three years. He said fast food companies rake in billions in profits by keeping pay low, which he said hurts the economy.

"I'm 31 years old. I'm a father and a son and it's very hard to make a living off minimum wage," Johnson said.

Plaintiffs' attorney Chisholm said the state law violated equal protection because it undermined the power of the Birmingham City Council to govern the city as the body elected by its majority black citizenry.

"The state law was passed in direct response to Birmingham's temerity to pass a law that would have raised wage rates," Chisholm said after the hearing. "And we think that, along with the history in Alabama shows that it really was racial discrimination and it was an attempt to strip power from local government, which is where African-Americans have been able to gather political power and exert it."

State attorney Parker told the judges that 22 other states have similar laws, including Florida and Georgia.

In a brief filed with the appeals court, attorneys for the state said this about the law in question:

"That law is reasonable, as demonstrated by empirical research. It was routine, as demonstrated by other Alabama preemption laws and some twenty-two similar laws enacted in other States. And it was timely, in light of one city's decision to pass its own local minimum wage

ordinance and rumblings that other cities would soon follow suit."

When the law passed the Legislature, proponents said a uniform, statewide minimum wage was important, in part, so businesses with multiple locations would not have pay employees differently.

Black lawmakers said the same lawmakers who typically complain about federal interference in state affairs were butting into the business of cities.

The law passed mostly along party and racial lines, with most Republicans for it and most Democrats against it.

The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Greater Birmingham Ministries and some individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in 2016, naming then-Gov. Robert Bentley and then-Attorney General Luther Strange as defendants.

The plaintiffs made multiple claims that the state law violated the Constitution and claimed it violated the Voting Rights Act.

Last year, U.S. District Judge David Proctor dismissed the case, writing there were "fatal flaws" in the plaintiffs' reasoning. One point Proctor made is that the harm alleged by the plaintiffs was caused by the Legislature in passing the law, and the Legislature was not a defendant in the case because it has "absolute immunity" against such claims.

The plaintiffs appealed Proctor's decision.

Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Charles R. Wilson, Adalberto Jordan and Anne C. Conway held this morning's hearing.

Wilson told Chisholm he did not see a voting rights violation, as the lawsuit claimed, but thought the claim of an equal protection violation was stronger.

Jordan, in questioning Parker, noted that a law that appears to be racially neutral could still have a discriminatory motive.

This story was corrected at 3:45 p.m. to say that Orrie Johnson works at Burger King.