TOPEKA – A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction stopping a Biden-Harris administration rule that would have allowed foreign ag workers to unionize. American agricultural workers are prohibited from unionizing.
The injunction was sought by 17 states in a lawsuit filed in June. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia all sought to stop the U.S. Department of Labor because a regulation enacted by Biden/Harris “illegally provides collective bargaining rights to agricultural migrant workers employed in the United States under the H-2A visa program.” The states argument basically stated that if the ruling was enacted, “alien agricultural workers would receive rights that American citizens working agricultural jobs do not enjoy.”
“The Biden-Harris administration has taken an America last position. In this case, they were trying to give alien ag workers rights that Americans do not have. That’s why Kansas took the lead in filing this lawsuit. The rule of law has prevailed,” Kobach said.
The ruling came from Judge Lisa Godbey Wood from the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Georgia. Godbey said nothing within the authority granted to the Department of Labor authorized it to approve or endorse the formation of labor unions.
“The Court finds no evidence of federal Congressional intent to create a right to collective bargaining for agricultural workers,” the opinion read. “The (DOL) Final Rule does just that. The Court therefore finds that the Final Rule exceeds the DOL’s constitutional authority because it creates a right.”
The court’s decision however doesn’t set a national interpretive precedent – it affects only the 17 states involved in the lawsuit.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
