Facts

Congress created the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program to ensure the economic security of farmworkers against low-cost foreign labor. The Department of Labor (DOL) establishes for each state an adverse effect wage rate (AEWR), which is a minimum wage that employers using the H-2A program must pay to both U.S. farmworkers and foreign guestworkers. The DOL has relied exclusively on data from the Farm Labor Survey to establish AEWRs. The United Farm Workers (UFW) is the nation's largest farmworkers' union with over 45,000 members nationwide. The UFW Foundation is the non-profit sister organization to the UFW founded with the purpose of empowering communities to ensure human dignity that serves over 100,000 farmworkers. On November 5, 2020, the DOL promulgated a final rule that amended regulations governing AEWR calculations by untethering the AEWR rate from any measure of market wages. On November 30, the UFW and UFW Foundation filed a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction against the DOL and Eugene Scalia, in his official capacity as the United States Secretary of Labor, seeking to enjoin the DOL from implementing the final rule. On December 23, 2020, the court entered a preliminary injunction that required the DOL to set the 2021 AEWRs using the methodology set forth in the prior rule. On February 23, 2021, the DOL published the AEWRs under the methodology from the 2010 rule. On On December 1, 2021, the DOL published a notice of proposed rulemaking. The rule determined that two major aspects of the 2020 rule do not adequately protect against adverse impact: the imposition of a 2-year wage freeze for field and livestock workers and the use of employment cost indexes for wages and salaries to annually adjust the AEWRs for field and livestock workers annually. On January 5, 2022, plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment.

PLAINTIFFS' CONTENTIONS: Plaintiffs contended that the final rule contravened the Immigration and Nationality Act by failing to protect U.S. workers against the adverse effects to their wages from admitting agricultural guestworkers, failing to offer a reasoned explanation for the wage freeze, and failing to adhere to the notice-and-comment requirements. They alleged that these changes will cause several hundreds of thousands of farmworkers already living on subsistence income to be paid significantly less than they otherwise would. Additionally, plaintiffs argued that since the court already considered these arguments persuasive in ruling on the motion for preliminary injunction, the same conclusions were warranted in summary judgment. Plaintiffs requested that the court declare the final rule arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful and vacate it with remand for further rulemaking proceedings consistent with the court's order.

DEFENDANTS' CONTENTIONS: Defendants contended that the court should hold plaintiffs' motion in abeyance since it would cause no harm to plaintiffs. Defendants alleged that plaintiffs would not be harmed because the 2020 rule will still remain enjoined. Defendants further argued that holding the pending motion in abeyance would conserve government resources. Finally, defendants alleged that deferring ruling on the motion would promote judicial economy by allowing the DOL to reconsider the 2020 rule without further judicial expenditure.

Result

Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment was granted.