The Farmworkers' Case Is About Pay. The Supreme Court Case Is About Power.
The Labor Department says seasonal farmworkers were denied promised kitchen access, charged for food and drinks, transported in unsafe vehicles, housed in substandard conditions, and sent home before receiving the work guaranteed to them. An agency judge ultimately ordered a New Jersey farm to pay $344,945.80 in back wages and $211,800 in civil penalties. On November 10, the Supreme Court will hear a case about those findings. But the justices are not scheduled to decide whether the violations occurred or how much any worker should receive. They are deciding who had the constitutional and statutory power to decide in the first place. Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards is therefore two cases at once: a concrete dispute about farmworkers' living and working conditions, and a structural dispute about whether an executive agency may enter a binding monetary judgment without first going to an Article III court.
The facts reached the Court through an administrative courtroom
Sun Valley Orchards used the H-2A program in 2015 to hire temporary agricultural workers for produce farming in New Jersey. The program permits an employer to seek federal approval to bring foreign workers into the United States when qualified domestic workers are unavailable and the employment will not adversely affect similarly employed workers here. Approval comes with detailed terms concerning pay, housing, meals, transportation, recruitment, and the amount of work guaranteed.
After an investigation, the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division alleged multiple violations. The agency's case included claims involving meal and drink deductions, kitchen access, the three-fourths work guarantee, attempted waivers, housing, and transportation. Sun Valley requested a hearing before a Labor Department administrative law judge. Following a four-day evidentiary hearing, the judge found violations and imposed $344,945.80 in back wages and $211,800 in penalties. The Department's Administrative Review Board affirmed.
Those findings should be described with care. They are agency determinations, not a Supreme Court merits judgment. Sun Valley challenged the order in federal district court on constitutional and statutory grounds. The district court sided with the government. The Third Circuit reversed, holding that the agency had adjudicated private rights reserved to Article III courts. It viewed the claims as resembling breach of contract and the remedies as traditional monetary relief. The appeals court did not decide Sun Valley's separate argument that Congress never authorized the Department to adjudicate the claims in-house.
The Supreme Court granted review on April 27 and added the statutory question the Third Circuit left open. That choice matters. The Court can decide whether the Constitution permits agency adjudication and whether Congress actually authorized it. A ruling for the government on one question will not necessarily answer the other.
The government's case begins with the privilege of participation
The government does not deny that contract-like terms and money are involved. Its argument is that context changes the character of the right. An employer has no freestanding entitlement to import temporary foreign labor. It asks the federal government for a special immigration-related benefit and receives it subject to conditions designed to protect both H-2A workers and domestic workers in corresponding employment.
From that premise, the government invokes the public-rights doctrine. Congress may assign some matters involving federal programs, public benefits, and government-created privileges to executive adjudication rather than an Article III court. The government says the conditions attached to H-2A participation are inseparable from the permission to bring workers into the country. An agency proceeding enforcing those conditions is therefore not merely a private contract action wearing a federal label.
History does substantial work in the briefing. The government points to long traditions of executive officers enforcing immigration conditions and assessing monetary consequences connected to the admission of noncitizens. It also emphasizes that the Labor Department has used administrative proceedings in the H-2A context for roughly four decades, with judicial review available after the agency reaches a final decision.
The practical argument is equally direct. Requiring the Department to file a new federal lawsuit whenever it seeks back wages or penalties would add time and cost to enforcement involving workers whose visas and employment are temporary by design. A remedy that arrives years after the season ends may still matter, but delay changes its value for people who have left the job, the state, or the country.
The farm says a public program cannot erase a private-rights boundary
Sun Valley's response is that government participation does not settle the forum question. The Department accused the farm of breaching obligations incorporated into employment contracts and sought back wages plus civil penalties. Those claims and remedies, Sun Valley argues, resemble disputes historically decided by courts. Calling the H-2A program a federal privilege does not authorize an executive agency to enter a binding monetary judgment whenever a participant allegedly violates a condition.
That argument draws force from the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in SEC v. Jarkesy. There, the Court held that the Securities and Exchange Commission could not use its in-house process to impose civil penalties for securities fraud when the claim resembled a common-law action and implicated the Seventh Amendment jury-trial right. The Third Circuit relied on Jarkesy in ruling for Sun Valley.
The analogy is contested. H-2A enforcement is tied to immigration admissions and a program-specific set of obligations, while securities fraud occupies a different statutory and historical setting. The Supreme Court also has recognized agency adjudication in several public-rights contexts. The real question is not whether Jarkesy applies everywhere. It is how a court identifies the point at which a statutory program's conditions become claims that only an Article III court may finally decide.
Sun Valley also challenges the suggestion that requesting H-2A workers amounts to consent to agency adjudication. Participation in a government program can carry lawful conditions. It does not follow that every constitutional protection becomes negotiable at the application window. If consent is doing the work, the Court must say what was accepted, where Congress stated it, and whether access to temporary labor can be conditioned on surrendering the claimed forum right.
The statutory question may be the Court's narrow exit
Section 1188(g)(2) authorizes the Secretary of Labor to take actions necessary to assure employer compliance with H-2A employment terms, including imposing appropriate penalties and seeking injunctions or specific performance in federal district court. The parties disagree about what that language assigns to the agency.
The government reads the contrast as deliberate. Congress said the Secretary may impose penalties but must seek injunctive relief in court. On that reading, the verb choice permits the agency to determine and impose monetary liability through its own process. Sun Valley answers that authority to impose a remedy does not necessarily specify who adjudicates the disputed facts and legal liability. Congress knows how to create an agency hearing scheme expressly, the farm argues, and did not do so clearly here.
Back wages complicate the text further. The provision expressly refers to penalties, while the agency order also awarded compensation to workers. The government treats back pay as an appropriate action to assure compliance and restore what the employment terms required. Sun Valley treats it as traditional contract relief lacking a clear in-house adjudication mandate.
A statutory ruling could avoid a broader constitutional holding. The Court could conclude that Congress did or did not authorize the process without defining the full boundary of public rights. It could also distinguish penalties from back wages, or initial agency fact-finding from final judicial enforcement. Narrowness would not make the decision unimportant. It would tell Congress and agencies how clearly they must allocate adjudicatory power when a regulatory program produces monetary liability.
Procedure is part of the remedy
For employers, the attraction of an Article III forum is obvious. A federal judge is institutionally separate from the agency that investigated and prosecuted the case. Depending on the claim, a jury may be available. The rules of evidence, discovery, review, and finality differ. Those are not cosmetic preferences when the government seeks more than half a million dollars.
For workers, changing the forum changes leverage and time. The H-2A relationship is unusually temporary and dependent. Workers may live in employer-provided housing, rely on employer-arranged transportation, and leave the United States when the authorized job ends. If the government must begin again in district court after investigating a violation, the additional delay can weaken evidence, fragment claims, and make recovery harder even when the substantive employment rule remains unchanged.
That does not answer the constitutional question. Efficient enforcement cannot create power the Constitution withholds, and fairness to workers cannot substitute for statutory authorization. It does explain why the case should not be reduced to a familiar slogan about an administrative state. Forum doctrine becomes real through who can afford the next proceeding, whose testimony remains available, and whether a remedy survives the time required to obtain it.
The Court hears argument on November 10. Questions from the bench may reveal concern about Jarkesy's reach, the immigration context, statutory clarity, or the difference between penalties and back pay. They will not be a decision. Until an opinion issues, the disciplined position is narrower: the agency found serious H-2A violations, the Third Circuit held that the forum was constitutionally improper, and the Supreme Court is now deciding whether that enforcement system can stand. The workers' claims and the separation of powers have arrived in the same courtroom, but they are not the same question.
Sources and further reading
Primary and industry sources used to support this page. External guidance should be reviewed in context and for your jurisdiction.
- Supreme Court docket, Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards, No. 25-966Official docket, grant order, merits briefs, amici, and the November 10, 2026 argument setting.
- Questions presented, No. 25-966The Court's official statement of the Article III and statutory-authority questions under review.
- Brief for the petitionersThe government's account of the H-2A program, agency findings, public-rights argument, statutory theory, and procedural history.
- Brief of respondent Sun Valley OrchardsThe farm's arguments that the claims involve private rights, that agency adjudication was unconstitutional, and that Congress did not authorize the process.
- Petition appendix and decisions belowThe Third Circuit opinion, district-court opinion, Administrative Review Board decision, ALJ decision, and underlying notice of determination.
- Reuters, Supreme Court farmworker-rights argument previewNovember 9 reporting on the November 10 argument and the dispute's relationship to the Court's recent agency-adjudication cases.