A U.S. District Court judge is expected to issue a ruling soon in a legal effort by the United Farm Workers to rescind the Department of Labor’s new wage rates for foreign guest workers in agriculture.

The union argues the new interim final rule significantly lowers the wages for workers in the H2A program, a strategy that allows U.S. agricultural employers to temporarily hire workers from another country when no domestic workers can be found.

As part of the program, farmers are required to pay H2A workers an hourly wage that does not adversely affect the wages of domestic workers.

Use of the program has grown in the last five years as farmers say they can’t find enough workers nationwide. At the same time, agriculture industry leaders have called for a less cumbersome and less costly guest worker program.

In response, the U.S. Department of Labor revised the wage rules in October 2025, along with other parts of the program, including the requirement to provide housing.

In March, lawyers for the UFW sought a preliminary injunction against the new wage rules but were denied. A motion for summary judgment was filed in July, and arguments from the union and the DOL were heard Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sheriff.

Union lawyer Kuntal Cholera, of Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C., said the changes have drastically reduced the wages of H2A workers and triggered lower wages for non-H2A farmworkers.

He said the DOL’s new rules classify most farmworkers as low skilled, placing them in the bottom tier of the salary scale. But that doesn’t come close to reflecting the market rate salary for farmworkers overall, a key factor in ensuring H2A workers’ wages don’t adversely effect those of other farmworkers.

Cholera also criticized the changes in the requirement that farmers must provide housing for guest workers. Although DOL officials said they have not eliminated the housing requirement, it has changed.

Patrick Keating, trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the government added an “adjustment factor” to the program that allows employers to adjust the hourly wage to account for the cost of housing.

Cholera said it still sounds like the H2A worker is losing out.

“Well, the DOL may say, ‘We’re not eliminating it, we’re just reducing your pay to account for it,’” Cholera said. “Respectfully, that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if you’re reducing someone’s pay to account for something, that thing isn’t free.”

One of the complaints about the H2A program is that it was too costly for most farmers. In fact, many agricultural groups have been in support of the changes, saying, in part, that it helps lower labor costs during a time of severe labor shortages.

But Cholera said statistics show a steady increase in the number of employers using guest worker labor, not a decline.

According to the American Farm Bureau, H-2A positions have grown by more than 25% since fiscal year 2021, rising from 317,619 to 398,258 in fiscal year 2025.

Cholera also said the notion that not having enough workers is a threat to the nation’s food supply is exaggerated. “There’s no reason why they needed to accelerate a drop in wages in order to address a food crisis or a labor shortage,” he said. “There’s no reason why farm establishments couldn’t just hire more labor at approximate market rates. We would submit that would probably make it easier to solve the labor crisis, not harder.”

The judge asked the government’s attorney why there wasn’t any data in the interim final rule (IFR) showing evidence of a labor shortage. “There have been zero releases at the border by the government over a couple of months, but I’m not seeing any citations to evidence that whatever was done at the border had any effect on labor in agricultural,” Sheriff said.

Keating said an exact number is difficult to come by, given that many agriculture workers are not legal residents.

“I do think that the IFR contains a fair amount of evidence to suggest that given that there’s an increase in H2A certification requests, and given that there’s a generalized decrease in illegal immigration, that it would then logically follow that there is also a decrease in labor,” Keating said. “Otherwise, why would farmers that typically rely on unregulated labor then turn to H2A?”

The judge said at the close of the nearly two-hour hearing in Fresno that he would issue his decision as “expeditiously” as possible.

©2026 The Fresno Bee. Visit at fresnobee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.