The National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE), which counts Western Growers as a member, along with several agricultural groups and individual farmers, has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, challenging the Department of Labor’s Final Rule, “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States.” This rule, according to the lawsuit, unlawfully infringes upon the constitutional rights of farm and ranch employers, imposing burdensome and illogical requirements. Among the issues raised, the rule enables temporary foreign agricultural workers to unionize, a right not extended to domestic farmworkers, while also complicating safety measures for agricultural employees. 

On August 29th, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rule’s enforcement in specific states, including Georgia, Kansas, and others (the “Kansas decision.”) However, this ruling leaves farmers in most states subject to the rule’s provisions. Despite this injunction, the Department of Labor has moved forward with implementing the rule for employers in states not covered by the court’s decision, while creating a bifurcated application process that further complicates compliance for those in states under the injunction. 

The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court in Kentucky to issue a nationwide injunction preventing DOL from enforcing the rule in the rest of the country not covered by the Kansas decision and ultimately strike down the rule.