Photo by Rachel Sadon.

A D.C. Superior Court judge has reversed his earlier position on a lawsuit over the $15-an-hour minimum wage initiative, ruling in favor today of efforts to put the increase on the ballot.

Supporters of the higher wage are declaring victory, though they will still have to wait for a possible appeal and final ballot language, after a suit put the legality of several electoral issues in question.

Last July, the D.C. Board of Elections approved language for a ballot initiative, allowing activists to go out and gather the signatures necessary to secure a vote. But Harry Wingo, then the head of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, sued, arguing that the three-member board wasn’t “properly constituted” at the time of the approval. The judge originally sided with Wingo, saying that the board wasn’t appointed according to the law because two of its members’ terms had expired.

Today, though, Judge Maurice Ross reversed that position.

And the DC for $15 campaign is confident they’ll be able to get the necessary signatures together by a July deadline to get the initiative on the November ballot. “We have plenty of time to get the signatures, it’s not a problem,” said Delvone Michael, the executive director of DC Working Families and a co-chair of DC for $15. “We have one of the best canvassers on the East Coast.”

The group is “cautiously optimistic” that they’ll get the petitions in the next thirty days or so, which would give them about two months to gather more than 20,000 signatures, and that an appeal won’t delay their efforts. “The AG supports our policy, the mayor supports the fight for 15, we’ve released numerous polls that show that 90 percent of D.C. supports it, I can’t imagine that Mr. Wingo would continue this fight that seems to be both frivolous and fruitless,” Michael said.

The governors of California and New York both signed legislation today to gradually raise their state’s minimum wage to $15 over the next few years.

Mayor Muriel Bowser announced last month that she plans to introduce similar legislation at the D.C. Council to raise the wage to $15 by 2020. But it is unclear if Bowser will include a provision to include tipped workers, which is part of the activists’ proposal.

“We’re talking with stakeholders and working on drafting legislation,” said mayoral spokesman Mike Czin. “We’re still working on formulating that policy.”

Until the mayor’s legislation is released, the DC for $15 campaign says they’ll move forward on collecting signatures.

“We definitely support the mayor’s efforts and want to applaud her on stepping up, but we intend to move forward on the ballot initiative with our efforts until we see exactly what her proposal is,” Michael said. “I want to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt—I don’t think she will cut tipped workers out.”