Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is leading a coalition of 17 states in opposing a new federal rule that allows temporary farm workers in the U.S. on H-2A visas to organize into a union.
Kobach said in a press release that the Biden Administration rule gives political benefits to foreign workers while American workers struggle in the current economy.
A lawsuit was filed June 10 in the Southern District Court of Georgia, arguing that the U.S. Department of Labor’s new rule is a rewrite of the National Labor Relations Act. Only Congress has the authority to make changes to the NLRA, according to the lawsuit. Additionally, Kobach argues that the rule creates a situation where hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign-migrant farmworkers would have the right to unionize while millions of American farmworkers do not.
Kansas is joined in the lawsuit by two private agricultural organizations and attorneys general from Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
