Federal Judge Blocks New Labor Rule for Migrant Farmworkers in 17 States

A federal judge in Georgia on Monday blocked a new labor rule that would give foreign farm workers on temporary U.S. visas certain rights and protections. A coalition of 17 states led by Kansas, Georgia, and South Carolina, alongside the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association and a Georgia farm, argued that a recent Department of Labor (DOL) regulation violates the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a 1935 federal law that allows certain employees to unionize. The NRLA allows workers to organize and collectively bargain and makes it an “unfair labor practice” for employers to “dominate or interfere” with this. However, agricultural laborers were explicitly excluded from the law’s definition of an “employee.”...