GREELEY, Colorado — A federal judge in Colorado ruled on Wednesday, October 28, that two meatpacking companies must face a proposed class action brought by Haitian workers at the JBS beef processing plant in Greeley, Law360 reported, with the judge saying the companies' bid to throw the case out is based mostly on technicalities. The lawsuit, against JBS USA Food Company and Swift Beef Company, alleges the companies lured Haitian workers to Colorado with false promises and subjected them to harsh working conditions because of their race. The allegations have not been proven — Wednesday's ruling decides only that the case may move forward, not that the companies broke the law.
Source: Law360
The case — Pierre v. JBS USA Food Company and Swift Beef Company, Case No. 1:25-cv-04023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, with a first amended class action complaint filed on February 18, 2026 — was brought by four Haitian workers on behalf of themselves and similarly situated employees. The workers' counsel, FarmSTAND, has said the suit covers more than 1,000 Haitian workers recruited to the Greeley plant, one of the large beef plants that anchor the economy of this northern Colorado city. The plaintiffs are represented by FarmSTAND, Nichols Kaster, PLLP and Towards Justice.
Source: First Amended Class Action Complaint, Case No. 1:25-cv-04023 (FarmSTAND)
What the workers allege: the recruitment
Starting in late 2023, the complaint alleges, a JBS human resources manager and his agent began recruiting Haitians via TikTok, promising employment that required no English language skills and employer-provided housing in nearby apartments while workers got set up in Greeley. The complaint says those promises led hopeful workers to incur significant travel costs and to pay unjust recruitment fees to secure the positions — fees and expenses that sit at the heart of the wage claims in the case, because the workers say the costs primarily benefited the company.
On arrival, the complaint alleges, recruits were made to stay in one-bedroom motel rooms with anywhere from three to eleven other Haitians, regardless of gender. Many were forced to sleep on the floor on stained carpeting, with only a blanket for bedding, and some rooms lacked adequate heat in the winter, the plaintiffs say. Reporting on the lawsuit describes workers later moved into a five-bedroom house shared by about 40 people, which lacked furniture, with workers buying blankets to sleep on the floor. The plaintiffs allege JBS management was aware of both the recruitment practices and the housing conditions and continued the hiring anyway — an allegation the company has not admitted and which the court has not found as fact.
On the line: training, speed and injuries
Once hired, the complaint alleges, Haitian workers were not given training in a language they understood — training was in English or Spanish — and JBS falsified the results of safety tests given to Haitian workers in order to get them onto the production line as quickly as possible, leaving inadequately trained workers to suffer serious injuries. Most Haitian workers were assigned to one of the plant's two shifts, the suit says, and soon after they arrived the company increased the line speed only on the shift staffed primarily by Haitian workers: the line averaged about 300 cattle per hour on the shift staffed primarily by non-Haitian workers, against an average of 370 and as high as 440 cattle per hour on the majority-Haitian shift, according to reporting on the complaint. Plaintiffs' counsel has described cattle coming at workers as quickly as every ten seconds for as long as ten hours, with bathroom breaks routinely denied.
Nesly Pierre, a plaintiff in the suit, in a statement from the workers' counsel at filing: “When I first saw a video recruiting Haitian workers to the JBS plant in Greeley, I was excited for a great opportunity. But immediately upon arrival to an overcrowded hotel room, I knew something was wrong, and that was only the beginning. I'm a part of today's lawsuit because I don't want workers – my fellow Haitians or any group of workers who may come to the U.S. in the future – to suffer in the way that I have.”
How the case reached Wednesday's ruling
JBS asked the court to dismiss several claims, arguing that its subsidiary Swift Beef Co., rather than JBS USA, was the workers' employer and that the complaint relied on improper 'group pleading,' and it challenged claims under Colorado labor laws and federal anti-discrimination statutes, according to MeatingPlace's report of the motion. A Colorado federal judge declined to rule on the bids at an April 23, 2026 hearing, Law360 reported at the time.
On June 12, 2026, U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter issued an order and recommendation denying JBS USA's motion to dismiss and denying a separate motion to strike the class allegations. Neureiter found the plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged claims involving discrimination, recruitment practices and wage-related violations; that the complaint plausibly alleged JBS USA and Swift acted as joint or integrated employers; and that the workers had adequately alleged disparate-treatment and disparate-impact claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, including the allegation that a predominantly Haitian 'B-Shift' ran at faster line speeds with higher injury risk. The magistrate judge also allowed claims under the Colorado Wage Claim Act and the Colorado Minimum Wage Act to proceed, finding the workers plausibly alleged that recruitment fees, transportation costs and employer-provided housing expenses may have reduced their pay below minimum-wage requirements, and said challenges to the proposed class definitions were better addressed at class certification. That recommendation went to U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez for the final ruling on the motion to dismiss — the ruling Law360 reported on Wednesday, October 28.
Source: MeatingPlace
Background: Greeley, Haitian workers and a plant already in dispute
Many Haitians working in the United States have done so with humanitarian parole or Temporary Protected Status (TPS), the designation for people who cannot safely return to their home countries. The Greeley fight has already spilled beyond this one lawsuit: the Food and Environment Reporting Network reported that Greeley workers voted on a strike in February 2026, days after U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes in Washington paused the termination of TPS for Haitians that had been scheduled to take effect on February 3, and a Business & Human Rights Resource Centre summary of March 2026 reporting described about 3,800 workers at the Greeley plant striking over working conditions, with JBS responding that it complies with labour laws. Those disputes are separate from Wednesday's ruling, but they form the backdrop against which the class action now advances.
What happens next
With dismissal refused, the case moves toward class certification — the stage the magistrate judge identified for fights over the proposed class definitions — and toward evidence-gathering on the claims themselves: Title VII and Section 1981 discrimination claims, the Colorado law against obtaining workmen by misrepresentation (C.R.S. § 8-2-104), Colorado Wage Claim Act and Minimum Wage Act claims, and unjust enrichment and civil theft claims over recruitment fees and housing charges. No trial date or settlement has been reported. For immigrant workers far beyond Greeley — including Punjabi diaspora workers in meatpacking, warehousing and trucking across the United States — the ruling is a reminder that a recruitment promise made on a phone screen can still end up tested, allegation by allegation, in a federal courtroom.