The Fight Over Farmworker Wages

If you missed the Fall 2025 rule changing wages for farmworkers, you're not alone. Here's a link to the federal register. Frankly, even if it had caught my eye, I'm not sure I would've had the time to parse it. That is one loooong document.

Never fear. The United Farm Workers (UFW) was on the case. In November, they filed suit in federal court to enjoin implementation of these new regs. The crux of their argument was this:

the Labor Department rule, which lowers pay for the H-2A agricultural visa program by about $5 to $7 an hour, “dramatically undercuts” wages for U.S. farmworkers in violation of federal immigration law.

Yesterday, the court delivered summary judgment in favor of the UFW. Here is the opinion:

The court writes:

the Court finds that the challenged components of the IFR [Interim Final Rule] are arbitrary and capricious, and that the IFR failed to establish that there was good cause to bypass the APA’s procedural requirements for most of the challenged components. The Court therefore finds the IFR unlawful and remands to DOL to promptly generate a new methodology for calculating AEWRs [Adverse Effect Wage Rates].

For WaPo's coverage of the story read here.