AI Generated Image (not the farm or people involved in this case)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard argument over H-2A penalties the Labor Department imposed on a New Jersey farm, and the justices’ questions suggested the case may turn on a single label: whether a farmworker visa program is an immigration program or a set of employment contracts. The answer in Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards will decide whether the department can keep using its own administrative law judges to order employers to pay fines and back wages for breaking visa-program rules, or whether it must sue in federal court, where an employer can demand a jury.
The case tests how far the Court’s 2024 decision in SEC v. Jarkesy reaches into immigration enforcement. Jarkesy held that the Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury when an agency seeks penalties on claims that resemble common-law suits, unless the dispute falls within the “public rights” exception that lets Congress send some matters to agencies. The money at issue is $556,745.80: $211,800 in civil penalties and $344,945.80 in back wages ordered after a 2015 inspection, according to the government’s brief. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sided with the farm in July 2025. The dispute’s history is laid out in an earlier preview of the Sun Valley Orchards case.
H-2A penalties argument: admission condition or labor contract
Sarah Harris, the principal deputy solicitor general, told the justices the dispute is at bottom a public-rights matter even though it touches housing and pay. “That classic public rights dispute doesn’t convert to private rights just because the government requires those programs to be embedded,” she said, according to The Center Square. She urged a narrow ruling, warning that “it would be a big deal for the government to lose, a bigger deal to have no clarity on what public rights look like.”
Robert Johnson, arguing for Sun Valley, countered that the department’s claims rest on breaches of the workers’ contracts and belong in an Article III court, as the outlet summarized his argument.
The bench’s questions pointed in different directions. Justice Elena Kagan pressed Johnson on his framing: “You’re trying to get us to say the H-2A program is not an immigration program, but it is an immigration program,” she said, adding, “It’s a condition of admission, the condition has been violated.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked whether he was “seriously suggesting that that could not be administratively adjudicated.” Justice Clarence Thomas told the government, “You can’t rely on immigration as a basis for this.” Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote Jarkesy, told Harris, “It seems to me you’re trying to extend broad authority beyond the justification of its application.” The Center Square reported that Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared cautious about broad agency adjudication power, while Kagan, Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson treated immigration as central to the case. Those exchanges come from that one published account; the official transcript will give the full record.
Why H-1B employers have a stake in a farm case
The program at issue is large and growing. Employers filed 24,725 H-2A applications in fiscal 2025, up 9.3 percent from the year before, and the department certified 398,258 of the 415,496 worker positions requested, according to Office of Foreign Labor Certification data through Sept. 30, 2025. That is about 96 percent, a calculation from those figures.
The government’s brief warns that the Third Circuit’s reasoning threatens similar in-house systems for the H-1B and H-2B programs. Complaints that an H-1B employer underpaid the wage promised on its labor condition application are investigated by the Wage and Hour Division and heard by Labor Department judges. If back wages are treated as private claims, the department would likely have to bring many of those cases in district court. That would also shape how much bite new wage rules have, including the H-1B prevailing wage rule now under White House review and the replacement H-2A wage rule due by Dec. 30.
A government loss would not strip every tool. The Third Circuit said debarring an employer from the program would likely still fit the public-rights tradition, so the practical outcome could be a split system: debarment handled in-house, money claims in court. The Court also agreed to decide a narrower statutory question, whether 8 U.S.C. 1188(g)(2) authorizes in-house collection proceedings at all. A ruling on that ground would leave the constitutional issue open and Congress free to amend the law. A broad constitutional ruling, by contrast, is likely to invite fresh challenges to other administrative penalty systems in immigration, such as the ICE civil fines already being litigated.
A decision is expected by the end of the term, typically late June.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- The Center Square, “U.S. Supreme Court appears split on migrant labor dispute,” Nov. 10, 2026
- Supreme Court docket, Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards, LLC, No. 25-966
- Brief for the petitioners (Department of Labor), June 18, 2026
- Petition for a writ of certiorari with appendix, including the Third Circuit opinion
- DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification, H-2A Selected Statistics, FY 2025 (data as of Sept. 30, 2025)
- SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024)
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