The National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE) says it is celebrating the Department of Labor’s decision to suspend the Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agriculture Employment in the United States rule, commonly known as the Farmworker Protection Rule.
When it published the rule in 2024, the Labor Department said the rule strengthened protections for temporary agricultural workers through several changes to the H-2A program regulations.
NCAE says this latest announcement comes following legal action by the organization and others pertaining to parts of the rule.
“From the outset, it was clear that the pejorative nature and tenor of the Rule was intended to feed and foster false and inappropriate narratives about America’s agricultural community,” NCAE President and CEO Michael Marsh said in a news release.
Marsh says NCAE met with officials at the Department of Labor to voice concerns following the rule’s publication of the rule. The organization says the department’s use of the notice of proposed rulemaking attempted to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021). NCAE says the rule also violated the will of Congress under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
“NCAE told the department it is not the role of regulators to legislate,” Marsh says. “That role belongs solely to Congress under Article I of the Constitution. The department frustratingly did not heed the advice of the agricultural community and promulgated the rule in 2024.”
NCAE says it and other organizations brought forth legal challenges to the rule, which resulted in three injunctions against the regulation.
“Finally, after three different courts blocked the rule three different times, it appears the department finally agrees with NCAE and our colleagues,” Marsh says. “We are glad we could convince them that America’s farm and ranch families are deserving of support, not false shade. This is a big win for America’s agricultural employers and the people working alongside them who are critical to our nation’s food security.”
