Cesar Chavez’s Legacy At SCOTUS Today In Clash Between Unions And Agricultural Business

March 22, 2021

Today SCOTUS will hear arguments in a case out of California concerning a state law that allows union organizers to briefly access private property to speak to agricultural workers about union membership. No other state has a similar law and it calls into question when the government can allow access to private property without compensation. Ariane de Vogue with CNN explains, “The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 allows union organizers to enter the property of a business three times a day for 120 days a year. The organizers are permitted a visit of one hour to speak to workers at break time. While the unions don’t need to obtain the employer’s consent before entering the property, they have to file written notice of their intent with the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.”

Jess Bravin with The Wall Street Journal notes, “One of labor leader CESAR CHAVEZ’S proudest achievements faces scrutiny Monday at the Supreme Court.” Bravin reviews the history of California’s 1975 law that was upheld by the state supreme court. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a grower challenge to the law. Bravin writes, “California growers are now arguing that the regulation, which allows organizers to enter their property to meet with workers during lunch hour and for one hour before and after their shifts, is a relic of the pre-digital era. Unions nowadays can organize through other means, they say, such as social media, text messages and off-site encounters.” But California argues union access is the only way many farmworkers can learn their rights. Agricultural laborers are frequently poor, lack basic education, and actually don’t have access to digital technology making in-person conversations at their workplace the best and most likely way of reaching them. 

The California case justices will hear today is “the court’s first major encounter with a labor dispute since the arrival of JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT,” Adam Liptak with The New York Times points out. The case, he says, “could also have far-reaching consequences beyond such campaigns, 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.” In recent years SCOTUS has dealt significant blows to public unions and, at the same time, it has been very protective of property rights.

“If you’re eating your fruits and vegetables, you can thank a migrant farmworker. Long after the campaigns for farmworker rights led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in the 1970s, the workers who pick the nation’s produce remain incredibly vulnerable.” Bethany Berger argues in the Los Angeles Times that if the Supreme Court rules against the California regulation, it threatens hundreds of federal, state and local laws that allow entries to property to protect health and safety. Berger notes, “The decision in Cedar Point Nursery will be a test of the Supreme Court and its three new justices. Will they decide in favor of past precedent and the understandings of the founding generation? Or will they create a radical new understanding of property owner and government rights? The answer will say much not just about the rights of migrant farmworkers but the future of the reconfigured Supreme Court.”