The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today state law lets take-out owners prohibit tips and, as long as they prominently alert visitors to that, keep any of the money customers insist on giving anyway.

The ruling comes in the case of employees of Dunkin' Donuts franchisee Constantine Scrivanos, who owns 66 Dunkin' shops in eastern Massachusetts and who bans tipping in about two-thirds of those.

In those stores, employees are told they can lose their jobs if they accept tips and have to maintain an "abandoned change" cup in which to put tips from insistent customers - which are then used to help out other customers, similar to the "take a penny/leave a penny" containers some stores have.

The employees sued, claiming the state's tipping law prohibits Scrivanos from barring tips, because it:

Does not permit an employer to take any "deduction from a tip," and that the defendants' prohibition on employees accepting tips in effect results in a "deduction from a tip" that the employee would have received absent the notipping policy.

The reply from the state's highest court can basically be summed up as: Seriously?

Still, the justices consulted three separate dictionaries for the meanings of the words "deduction" and "given," in addition to looking at past decisions and the tip law itself, to conclude the law only applies to establishments that allow tips, that it does not prohibit no-tipping policies, and that as long as Scrivanos posts prominent signs alerting customers that tips are banned, the money some customers leave anyway is not really a "tip" under the law.