Late last month, a federal judge in Georgia blocked the U.S. Department of Labor from enforcing its “Farmworker Protection Rule,” also known as the “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States” rule. The Rule bars employers from retaliating against farmworkers who are in the United States on temporary H-2A visas and trying to form unions. Following the court ruling, the DOL halted the planned implementation entirely.
The lawsuit was brought by an agricultural trade group and 17 states, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and was assigned to Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Judge Wood concluded that the DOL’s rule was invalid because Congress had explicitly excluded these agricultural workers from such protections when it enacted the National Labor Relations Act, which gave similar protections to other workers in the private sector.
This spring, the DOL released a final rule designed to expand employment protections for farmworkers in the H-2A visa program and strengthen the department’s capabilities to monitor and enforce program compliance. According to the DOL, the new rule targets abusive working conditions experienced by H-2A temporary agricultural workers. Once the DOL released the rule, the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Association and attorneys general from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia filed suit to block the regulations, noting specifically that the National Relations Act has always excluded agricultural workers from its definition of “employee” since it came into being in the 1930s.
Judge Wood referenced the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which reversed a 40-year-old legal doctrine that required district courts to defer to federal agencies on how to interpret the laws they were tasked with enforcing. After the Loper Bright decision, courts are now required to independently decide whether an agency has acted within the boundaries set by Congress when it enacted a statute. Applying this new standard, Judge Wood found that the DOL regulation was invalid in light of the NLRA’s exclusion of farmworkers.
In light of the court-ordered injunction in 17 states, the DOL announced that it has suspended the implementation of the rule until further notice nationwide. The DOL has asked Judge Wood to sever parts of the rule that implicate the NLRA and allow other parts of the rule to be enforced. A spokesperson for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit has stated that they believe it is unlikely that the DOL will appeal the decision.
