South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson is co-leading a 17-state coalition suing the Biden administration to stop migrant farm workers from getting union rights that domestic farm workers don’t have. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia Brunswick Division granted the states’ motion for a preliminary junction to stop the move while the lawsuit is pending.
“Here we go again. The Biden administration is almost constantly trying to enact rules and regulations that it does not have the authority to do, but we’ll keep fighting this unconstitutional overreach every time it happens,” Attorney General Wilson said.
In granting the motion, the Court agreed that the U.S. Department of Labor’s new rule goes against federal law because the DOL is attempting to unconstitutionally create law that it doesn’t have the authority to make.
The injunction is not nationwide but is limited to the plaintiff states, including South Carolina, and private plaintiffs.
The states argue that the DOL’s new rule, “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States,” illegally provides collective bargaining rights to agricultural migrant workers employed in the U.S. under the H-2A visa program. That would give those migrant workers rights that American citizens working agricultural jobs do not have.
In addition to South Carolina, the states suing are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Private groups Miles Berry Farm and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association are also plaintiffs.
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