On a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a California labor law on Wednesday that allowed union organizers onto an agricultural employer’s property to enlist farmworkers to join the union. The 1975 law was a legacy of Cesar Chavez, a founder of the United Farm Workers union, and the court decision was a blow to the labor movement.
“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for property rights,” said attorney Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which argued the case on behalf of Cedar Point Nursery, a strawberry grower, and Fowler Packing Co., a fruit shipper. They argued that union access, of up to three hours a day for up to 120 days a year, was an unconstitutional government confiscation of private property.
The Supreme Court agreed, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing in the majority opinion: “The access regulation grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers’ property. It therefore constitutes a per se physical taking.”
Associate Justice Stephen Breyer said the decision bungled the difference between temporary access and a permanent takeover. “A right of access such as the right at issue here, a non-permanent right, is not automatically a ‘taking,’ ” he wrote in dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The United Farm Workers said the ruling “makes a racist and broken farm labor system even more unequal. This decision denies [farmworkers] the right to use their lunch breaks to freely discuss whether they want to have a union. The Supreme Court has failed to balance a farmer’s property rights with a farmworker’s human rights.”
But the largest U.S. farm group, which sided with the businesses during the Supreme Court’s consideration of the so-called Cedar Point Nursery case, said, “This decision sends a message to state regulators that it’s simply wrong to give outsiders access to farms.” Property rights “are foundational to our nation,” said the American Farm Bureau Federation.
California was the first state to give collective bargaining rights to farmworkers, in 1975. Soon afterward, the state agricultural labor board approved a “right to access rule” that allowed organizers to talk to workers while they were on the farm.
“The court’s majority is once again rigging the system in favor of big corporations and against workers,” said Karla Walter of the Center for American Progress, a think tank. “Reaching farmworkers — the overwhelming majority of whom are Latinx and migrant workers — where they work is critical to protecting their rights and interests. These rules were meant to bring justice to farmworkers and stability in labor relations, and in no way interfere with private-property rights.”
Mike Fahner, owner of Cedar Point Nursery, said the decision “protects everyone’s freedom to decide who is, and who is not, allowed on their own property.”
To read the majority and minority opinions in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, click here.