Federal judge blocks Biden labor protections for foreign farmworkers

A national judge successful Kentucky rejected expanded protections implemented by the Biden-Harris medication for overseas farmworkers who travel to the U.S. nether H-2A visas.  

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves granted an injunction siding with Kentucky farmers and Republican attorneys wide successful Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Alabama who argued that the caller rules constituted granting overseas farmworkers postulation bargaining rights. Reeves said that Congress, not the Biden-Harris administration, would person to find whether to let H-2A visa-holders the close to unionize. 

Those caller rules, implemented by the U.S. Department of Labor successful April, expanded protections for H-2A visa-holders, including requiring employers to guarantee they would not intimidate, endanger oregon different discriminate against overseas farmworkers for "activities related to self-organization" and "concerted activities for the intent of communal adjutant oregon extortion relating to wages of moving conditions." 

"In possibly its astir blatant arrogation of authority, the Final Rule seeks to widen galore rights to H-2A workers which they did not antecedently bask done its idiosyncratic dependable and empowerment provisions," Judge Reeves wrote. "The DOL justifies this attempted regulatory enlargement arsenic an effort to forestall the alleged ‘unfair treatment’ of H-2A workers by employers to support likewise situated American workers."

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Temporary cultivation workers with H-2A enactment visas hold successful enactment to transverse the San Ysidro Port of Entry connected their mode to seasonal jobs successful the United States connected March 22, 2022 successful Tijuana, Mexico.  (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

"The Final Rule not truthful sneakily creates substantive corporate bargaining rights for H-2A cultivation workers done the ‘prohibitions’ it places connected their employers," Reeves wrote. "Framing these provisions arsenic specified expansions of anti-retaliation policies, the DOL attempts to assistance H-2A workers substantive rights without Congressional authorization." 

Under a anterior preliminary injunction issued by a national judge successful Georgia, the caller rules had already been blocked successful 17 states. Reeves' determination does not use nationwide. 

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman speaks during the Fancy Farm picnic successful Fancy Farm, Kentucky, connected Aug. 5, 2023.  (Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

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Congress created the H-2A impermanent cultivation visa programme successful 1986 done the Immigration Reform and Control Act, allowing employers to prosecute foreign farmworkers connected a temporary, seasonal basis, erstwhile determination is simply a shortage of U.S. workers to capable the needed positions. It includes protections for American workers, including mounting a minimum wage complaint for foreigners coming to enactment nether the program. 

A barn and stone stacks extracurricular of the Horse District of Lexington, Kentucky. (Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman argued that the Biden-Harris medication rules could person caused "serious and irreversible harm to farmers who are conscionable trying to get by and bring nutrient to Kentucky’s meal tables." 

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"We should beryllium moving to assistance Kentucky’s farmers, not enactment them retired of business. This unlawful and unnecessary regularisation from the Biden-Harris Administration would person made it harder to get farmers’ products to market store shelves and would person accrued already precocious prices for families," Coleman said successful a statement. "We volition proceed to bash what’s close to basal up for Kentucky’s farmers."