Supreme Court Rules Against Union Recruiting on California Farms
The case concerned a unique state regulation allowing labor
representatives to meet with farm workers at their workplaces for up to
three hours a day for as many as 120 days a year.
*
<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=9869919170&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F06%2F23%2Fus%2Fsupreme-court-unions-farms-california.html%3Fsmid%3Dfb-share&name=Supreme%20Court%20Rules%20Against%20Union%20Recruiting%20on%20California%20Farms&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F>
*
<https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=Supreme%20Court%20Rules%20Against%20Union%20Recruiting%20on%20California%20Farms%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F06%2F23%2Fus%2Fsupreme-court-unions-farms-california.html%3Fsmid%3Dwa-share>
*
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F06%2F23%2Fus%2Fsupreme-court-unions-farms-california.html%3Fsmid%3Dtw-share&text=Supreme%20Court%20Rules%20Against%20Union%20Recruiting%20on%20California%20Farms>
*
<mailto:?subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20Supreme%20Court%20Rules%20Against%20Union%20Recruiting%20on%20California%20Farms&body=From%20The%20New%20York%20Times%3A%0A%0ASupreme%20Court%20Rules%20Against%20Union%20Recruiting%20on%20California%20Farms%0A%0AThe%20case%20concerned%20a%20unique%20state%20regulation%20allowing%20labor%20representatives%20to%20meet%20with%20farm%20workers%20at%20their%20workplaces%20for%20up%20to%20three%20hours%20a%20day%20for%20as%20many%20as%20120%20days%20a%20year.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F06%2F23%2Fus%2Fsupreme-court-unions-farms-california.html%3Fsmid%3Dem-share>
*
*
* /120/
Farmworkers at Cedar Point Nursery in California. The owners of the
nursery said letting unions have access to their properties amounted to
a government taking of private property without compensation.
Farmworkers at Cedar Point Nursery in California. The owners of the
nursery said letting unions have access to their properties amounted to
a government taking of private property without
compensation.Credit...Pacific Legal Foundation
Adam Liptak <https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-liptak>
ByAdam Liptak <https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-liptak>
NYT, June 23, 2021Updated2:33 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Courtruled on Wednesday
<https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-107_ihdj.pdf>that a
California regulation allowing union organizers to recruit agricultural
workers at their workplaces violated the constitutional rights of their
employers.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that
“the access regulation grants labor organizations a right to invade the
growers’ property.” That meant, he wrote, that it was a taking of
private property without just compensation.
The decision did away with a major achievement of the farmworkers’
movement led by Cesar Chavez in the 1970s, which had argued that
allowing organizers to enter workplaces was the only practical way to
give farmworkers, who can be nomadic and poorly educated, a realistic
chance to consider joining a union.
The ruling was the latest blow to unions from a court that has issued
several decisions limiting the power of organized labor.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/us/supreme-court-unions-farms-california.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage#after-story-ad-1>
The case,Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid
<https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/cedar-point-nursery-v-hassid/>,
No. 20-107, arose from organizing efforts in 2015 at Fowler Packing
Company, a shipper of table grapes and citrus, and Cedar Point Nursery,
which grows strawberry plants. They sued California officials in 2016,
saying the regulation letting unions have access to their properties
amounted to a government taking of private property without
compensation. The growers lost in the lower courts.
The state regulation, issued in 1975 and unique in the nation, allows
union organizers to meet with agricultural workers at work sites in the
hour before and after work and during lunch breaks for as many as 120
days a year.
Supreme Court precedents draw a distinction between two kinds of
government takings of private property — those that physically claim a
property interest and those that impose a regulatory burden.
The first kind — “per se” takings — requires compensation even if the
property interest in question is minor. But regulations amount to
takings only where the economic effect is significant.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the access regulation was a per se taking.
“The regulation grants union organizers a right to physically enter and
occupy the growers’ land for three hours per day, 120 days per year,” he
wrote. “Rather than restraining the growers’ use of their own property,
the regulation appropriates for the enjoyment of third parties the
owners’ right to exclude.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/us/supreme-court-unions-farms-california.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage#after-story-ad-2>
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M.
Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the chief justice’s majority opinion.
In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that “the majority’s
conclusion threatens to make many ordinary forms of regulation unusually
complex or impractical.”Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined
his dissent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, had
ruled that the regulation did not impose a burden so heavy that it
amounted to a per se taking because the access right was temporary and
intermittent. Chief Justice Roberts disagreed.
“That position is insupportable as a matter of precedent and common
sense,” he wrote. “There is no reason the law should analyze an
abrogation of the right to exclude in one manner if it extends for 365
days, but in an entirely different manner if it lasts for 364.”
Justice Breyer responded that “this regulation does not ‘appropriate’
anything; it regulates the employers’ right to exclude others.”
Nine Supreme Court Cases to Watch This Term
Public opinion is closely divided on health care, voting, religion and
gay rights cases.
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/01/us/major-supreme-court-cases-2021.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article>
The court has in recent yearsdealt blows to public unions
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-unions-organized-labor.html>andlimited
the ability of workers to band together
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-workplace-arbitration-contracts.html>to
take legal action over workplace issues. At the same time, the court has
beenprotective of property rights
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/politics/supreme-court-precedent.html>.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/us/supreme-court-unions-farms-california.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage#after-story-ad-3>
In 1956, the Supreme Court said a federal labor law, one that excludes
agricultural workers, may allow union organizers to enter private
property in limited circumstances. “If the location of a plant and the
living quarters of the employees place the employees beyond the reach of
reasonable union efforts to communicate with them,” Justice Stanley
Reedwrote for the court
<https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/351/105/>, “the employer
must allow the union to approach his employees on his property.”
In a concurring opinion on Wednesday, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the
1956 ruling “strongly supports the growers’ position in today’s case
because the California union access regulation intrudes on the growers’
property rights far more” than the logic of that decision allowed.
Later precedents pointed in opposite directions. In 1982,the court ruled
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/458/419>that requiring
landlords to allow cable television companies access to their property
was a per se taking of property requiring compensation, even if minimal.
But in 1980,it ruled that
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/447/74>a California
Supreme Court decision that allowed high school students to gather
petitions at a private shopping mall did not amount to a taking of the
mall’s property.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the union regulation resembled the one
requiring compensation for cable access, noting that the mall was open
to the public to begin with.“Limitations on how a business generally
open to the public may treat individuals on the premises are readily
distinguishable from regulations granting a right to invade property
closed to the public,” he wrote.
Lawyers for the labor board had argued that a ruling for the businesses
challenging the regulations could have vast implications for all sorts
of government activities, including limiting the government’s ability to
enter private property to conduct health and safety inspections of
facilities like coal mines and pharmaceutical plants and to perform home
visits by social workers charged with ensuring child welfare.
Justice Breyer voiced similar concerns.“Consider,” he wrote, “the large
numbers of ordinary regulations in a host of different fields that, for
a variety of purposes, permit temporary entry onto (or an ‘invasion of’)
a property owner’s land. They include activities ranging from
examination of food products to inspections for compliance with
preschool licensing requirements.”
Chief Justice Roberts discounted those concerns.“Government health and
safety inspection regimes will generally not constitute takings,” he
wrote, because the government may make such inspections a condition of
granting licenses and permits.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/us/supreme-court-unions-farms-california.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage#after-story-ad-4>
Chief Justice Roberts did not say what should follow from the court’s
ruling that the regulation was a taking.The companies had sought an
injunction barring access, but the usual remedy for a government taking
of private property is just compensation.
In dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that the option of providing
compensation remains open when the case returns to the lower courts.“On
remand,” he wrote, “California should have the choice of foreclosing
injunctive relief by providing compensation.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#9385): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/9385
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83748266/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
#4 Do not exceed five posts a day.
-=-=-
Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[arch...@mail-archive.com]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
