Teche Vermilion Sugar Cane Growers Ass’n v. Su

The H-2A program authorizes the admission of nonimmigrant workers to perform agricultural labor on a temporary basis if the Department of Labor (DOL) certifies that there are insufficient available workers within the United States to perform the job and that the employment of foreign workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly situated U.S. workers. To ensure that the H-2A program does not depress the wages of U.S. agricultural workers, DOL regulations require that employers pay the workers the highest applicable wage, which is usually the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which DOL has set using the annual Farm Labor Survey conducted by the Department of Agriculture.

In February 2023, DOL issued a new rule to fix a flaw in the prior rule that resulted in an adverse effect on the wages of U.S. farmworkers. Because the Farm Labor Survey reflects the wages of field workers but does not include information about the wages of workers in more specialized and generally higher-paying occupations, such as truck drivers, the new rule will set the AEWR for such jobs using information from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey. The AEWR for field workers will continue to be based on the Farm Labor Survey.

Employers challenged the new rule and moved for a preliminary injunction to bar its enforcement. On behalf of three workers and the non-profit organization Farmworker Justice, we filed an amicus brief in support of DOL’s opposition to the employer’s motion, explaining that the new rule is a reasonable approach to fulfill DOL’s statutory responsibility to ensure that the employment of H-2A workers will not depress the wages of U.S. workers similarly employed.

On September 19, 2024, the Court issued a decision granting plaintiffs’ application for a preliminary injunction. The Court agreed that DOL’s use of non-farm wage surveys in setting the AEWR for H-2A workers does not exceed DOL’s statutory authority so long as the workers are “similarly employed,” and that agricultural and non-agricultural employees can sometimes be “similarly employed.” It found, however, that the work performed by H-2A sugarcane haulers in Louisiana differs significantly from that of full-time, year-round non-farm truck drivers. Thus, the Court concluded that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the rule exceeds DOL’s statutory authority because it bases the AEWR for H-2A sugarcane truck drivers on the wages of non-farm truck drivers who are not similarly employed, and on their claim that the rule is arbitrary and capricious because DOL failed to analyze the differences in the work of the two groups. The preliminary injunction applies only to H-2A workers employed in sugarcane farming and processing operations in Louisiana and hired by the plaintiffs and their members.