On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff in Fresno ruled that the Labor Department acted unlawfully when it cut the wages paid to H-2A guest farmworkers.
The H-2A program requires employers to pay an Adverse Effect Wage Rate, a floor set to ensure that hiring foreign guest workers does not depress wages for U.S. farmworkers doing the same jobs. The Labor Department rewrote the methodology for calculating it. In California the rate fell from $19.97 to $16.90 an hour, a 15 percent cut that applied to H-2A workers and to the U.S. farmworkers working beside them.
Sherriff concluded the department failed to reasonably consider whether it could still satisfy its legal obligation to ensure that hiring H-2A workers would not “adversely affect” the wages of U.S. farmworkers, which is the entire purpose of the rate.
The remedy is partial. He allowed the rule to remain temporarily in effect while the agency develops a replacement, and ordered the Labor Department to promptly produce a new methodology consistent with his decision. So the lower wages continue for now.
The Economic Policy Institute estimated farmworkers stand to lose $4.4 billion to $5.4 billion annually under the rewritten rate. California Attorney General Rob Bonta had opposed the rule. Grower groups supported the change; labor organisations opposed it.