A federal judge in Fresno, California, has ruled that the Trump administration illegally cut the wages of foreign farm guest workers under the H-2A program, and the U.S. Labor Department now has until December 30, 2026 to rewrite the pay formula that covers nearly 400,000 seasonal farm jobs across the United States.
Source: Court order, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California (via Justia)
The case, United Farm Workers et al. v. U.S. Department of Labor (No. 1:25-cv-01614-KES-EGC), was brought by the United Farm Workers union, the UFW Foundation and 18 individual farmworkers, who sued last November over an interim final rule that had lowered H-2A wage rates. On August 26, 2026, U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff sided with the plaintiffs.
Judge Sherriff found the department's rule was both arbitrary and capricious and procedurally defective under the Administrative Procedure Act. In the reporting on the ruling, the court found that by setting pay for most H-2A workers well below the relevant market wages, the department had failed to reasonably consider its legal duty to protect U.S. workers, and that it had improperly skipped public comment.
What the wage rule changed
The H-2A program lets U.S. employers hire foreign nationals for seasonal farm work when they show U.S. workers are unable or unwilling to fill the jobs. Federal law requires a minimum wage — the Adverse Effect Wage Rate — designed so that bringing in guest workers does not undercut the pay of U.S. farmworkers doing the same work.
In the fall of 2025, the Labor Department revised that formula, introducing lower pay categories and deductions linked to employer-provided housing. In California, the federal H-2A rate fell from $19.97 an hour to $16.59 — below California's own $16.90 state minimum wage, which therefore became the effective floor in the state, according to reporting on the rule. Reporting on the ruling has put the overall shift at an estimated $2.5 billion a year moving from workers to growers.
Why back pay is now on the table
Rather than throwing out the rule immediately — which could have left the program with no wage rates at all — Judge Sherriff left it in place temporarily and ordered the department to promptly produce a new methodology. On September 2, the Labor Department sent employers a notice warning that they may owe workers the difference between the current rates and the new ones once a revised formula is in place.
When the department then asked for up to six more months — and at one point described a nine-to-twelve-month rulemaking process — the judge refused. In an October 2 order, he set the December 30 deadline and ruled that the current rule will expire that day either way. If the deadline is missed, reporting on the order says wages automatically snap back to the rates set under the previous administration.
"For over a year, farm workers have been working for illegal wages that are so drastic that workers cannot afford the rising costs of rent, groceries, gas, medications, and other basic needs for survival," Erica Lomeli Corcoran, CEO of the UFW Foundation, said in a statement after the deadline was set.
Grower groups have criticized the ruling. "The Department's IFR [interim final rule] provided long-overdue stability against runaway wage mandates," John Hollay, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, which backed the rule, said in an announcement for a webinar about the decision. "Striking down the IFR has reopened that wound and throws American agriculture and our rural communities back into financial and existential instability."
Why this lands hardest in the Central Valley
The ruling was issued in Fresno, in the heart of California's Central Valley — the farming region where Punjabi and other South Asian families have worked fields, run crews and owned farms for generations. Because the H-2A rate functions in practice as a reference wage for a whole crew, analysts cited in coverage of the case note that a lower guest-worker rate can also hold down what U.S. workers alongside them are paid.
The stakes are wide: H-2A certifications have climbed every year since 2012 and reached a record 398,258 positions in fiscal 2025, and a 2024 Government Accountability Office report found violations — most commonly involving pay — in 84% of the Labor Department's H-2A employer investigations between fiscal 2018 and 2023. California has also moved separately on a state wage floor for farmworkers, reported at $19.75 an hour for some covered workers, which applies alongside the federal rules.
The Labor Department must publish a new wage methodology by December 30, 2026. If it does, growers who paid the lower rates may owe back pay for the difference. If it does not, the challenged rule expires that day and the previous rates return. No replacement rates had been published as of October 28.
For growers and crew leaders in the Valley, the practical advice from the court's own paper trail is record-keeping: the September 2 notice means hours and rates paid under the current formula may be recalculated once the new formula appears. For workers, the case is not a final payday — it is a deadline, and what the department files in the next nine weeks will decide whether the August ruling turns into money.