Judge rules Trump administration's H-2A farmworker pay cut illegal, orders new formula by Dec. 30

U.S. District Judge Kirk Sherriff of the Eastern District of California sided with the United Farm Workers union, the UFW Foundation and 18 farmworkers who sued over the rule last November. He found that by setting pay for most H-2A workers "well below the relevant market wages," the department had failed to reasonably consider whether the rule met its legal duty to protect U.S. workers, and that it had improperly skipped public comment. Rather than throwing out the rule immediately, which could have left the program without wage rates, Sherriff left it in place and ordered the department to promptly develop a replacement.

Roughly a sixth of the U.S. agricultural workforce comes to the country temporarily under H-2A visas, which allow employers to hire foreign nationals for seasonal work if they can show U.S. workers are unable or unwilling to fill the roles. Most harvest labor-intensive crops such as melons, apples and tomatoes. Certifications have climbed every year since 2012, reaching a record 398,258 positions in fiscal 2025. The program has also drawn scrutiny: between fiscal 2018 and 2023, the Labor Department found violations in 84% of its investigations of H-2A employers, most commonly involving pay, according to a 2024 Government Accountability Office report. In an extreme case, federal prosecutors in Georgia in 2021 charged 24 people with running a trafficking operation that exploited dozens of H-2A workers in conditions they described as "modern-day slavery," with at least two workers dying as a result.

Historically, the H-2A minimum was set at the average farmworker wage in each state or region using the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Labor Survey. In August 2025, the USDA discontinued that survey. On Oct. 2, the Labor Department issued an interim final rule relying instead on a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of mostly nonfarm employers. The rule split H-2A jobs into two pay tiers, set entry-level wages at roughly the 17th percentile of pay, a tier the department expected 92% of jobs to fall into, and cut wages further to offset the housing employers must provide to H-2A workers. In California, the minimum H-2A wage fell from $19.97 an hour to the state minimum wage of $16.90. The department estimated the new calculation would shift about $2.46 billion a year from workers to employers. Among the employers that applied to hire workers under the new rates was the Trump Organization, which sought 36 H-2A workers for its Virginia winery at a pay rate nearly $2 an hour below what it had previously offered, Forbes reported.

After the Aug. 26 ruling, the Labor Department sent employers a notice on Sept. 2 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 asked for up to six months to write a new rule, Sherriff set the Dec. 30 deadline and ruled that the current rule will expire that day either way.

Erica Lomeli Corcoran, CEO of the UFW Foundation, said in a statement after the deadline was set: "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."

John Hollay, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, a trade group that backed the rule, said the interim final rule provided "long-overdue stability against runaway wage mandates." Striking it down, he said, "has reopened that wound and throws American agriculture and our rural communities back into financial and existential instability."

The Labor Department must report its progress to the court every three weeks until it issues a new rule. In its first report, filed Oct. 22, it said it was consulting with the USDA and the Department of Homeland Security and that, while it still objects to the deadline, it would try to meet it. Whether growers will owe back pay, and how much, will not be decided until the new rates are set. The UFW has said it will push for higher wages to apply retroactively. California is not waiting: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law last month setting a $19.75 hourly minimum for H-2A workers and the local employees working alongside them, starting Jan. 1. Demand for guest workers keeps climbing, with certifications in the first half of fiscal 2026 running nearly 17% ahead of the year before.