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Trump's Labor Department cut farmworker pay $2.46 billion a year. A judge says it broke the law.

In California the H-2A rate was $19.97 an hour. The new rule let it fall to the $16.90 state minimum.

Trump's Labor Department cut farmworker pay $2.46 billion a year. A judge says it broke the law.
Stock photo. Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

A federal judge in Fresno has given the Trump Labor Department until Dec. 30 to replace its 2025 pay cut for H-2A farmworkers, after ruling the cut unlawful. The workers who were paid under it could be owed back pay, but the court won't decide that until a new wage rule is in place.

U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff of the Eastern District of California ruled Aug. 26 in United Farm Workers v. U.S. Department of Labor (No. 1:25-cv-01614) that the rule set wages for most H-2A workers "well below the relevant market wages." In an Oct. 2 order, he wrote that "Defendants shall issue a new interim final rule by December 30, 2026," and that the current rule "is vacated effective December 30, 2026." The Labor Department filed its first status report Oct. 22.

How the cut worked

The Labor Department issued the rule Oct. 2, 2025, without the usual public comment period. It changed the "adverse effect wage rate," the minimum hourly pay that farms using H-2A guestworker visas must offer both the foreign workers and U.S. workers doing the same jobs. The rule split jobs into two skill tiers and let employers lower pay further to account for housing they are already required to provide. By the department's own estimate in the Federal Register, the rule moves about $2.46 billion a year from H-2A workers to their employers.

In California, the 2025 rate was $19.97 an hour. Under the new formula the entry-level rate fell below the state's $16.90 minimum wage, so California's minimum became the floor, Agri-Pulse and Fortune reported. The department certified 398,258 H-2A jobs in fiscal 2025, Capital Press reported.

The United Farm Workers, the union Dolores Huerta co-founded, sued in November 2025 with the UFW Foundation and 18 farmworkers, including U.S. citizens who work alongside H-2A crews.

Who won, who lost

The workers won on the law. Sherriff held the tier system, the housing deduction and other parts of the rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and found the department lacked good cause to skip public comment on most of it. He wrote that the rule "failed to reasonably consider whether its methodology could fulfill DOL's statutory duty" to protect U.S. workers.

The department and growers kept the lower rates for now. Sherriff left the rule in place to avoid leaving the program with no wage rates, and in May he had denied the workers' request for a preliminary injunction. The department first proposed nine to 12 months to write a new rule, then about six; Sherriff wrote that "Defendants have not shown why an additional six months" was needed.

In a Sept. 2 notice required by the ruling, the department told employers they "may be required to make wage adjustment payments" to H-2A workers and U.S. workers in the same jobs who earned less than the new rates, covering Sept. 2 until the new rates are issued. The department said "no such payment obligation exists at this time" and that complying does not concede the court's power to order back wages. Its Oct. 22 report said it is consulting with the Agriculture Department and DHS and will try to meet the deadline while still objecting to it, Capital Press reported.

"The federal courts have spoken: the Trump administration's wage cuts are illegal," Erica Lomeli Corcoran, CEO of the UFW Foundation, said in an Oct. 19 statement. John Hollay, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, said the rule had "provided long-overdue stability against runaway wage mandates" and that "striking down the IFR has reopened that wound," in a statement from the growers' group.

This is the same Labor Department that is stepping back from wage enforcement elsewhere. We condemn a pay rule that, by the department's own math, takes billions a year from the people who pick the country's food.

What comes next, and what to do now

The next joint status report is due three weeks after Oct. 22, around Nov. 12, and every three weeks after that. The new rule is due Dec. 30. Once new rates are set, the court will take briefing on whether workers get back pay and how much.

If you work an H-2A job or a U.S. job alongside H-2A workers, keep every pay statement. Federal H-2A rules require your employer to give you one on or before each payday showing your hours worked, hourly or piece rate, and deductions, under 20 C.F.R. 655.122(k). The department's notice tells employers to keep workers' permanent home addresses, phone numbers and email current, so make sure your employer has yours, including after you go home. The UFW Foundation's help line is 1-877-881-8281.

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