⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Supreme Court considers a labor dispute involving Sun Valley Orchards, a New Jersey fruit-and-vegetable farm that hired seasonal workers through the H-two-A visa program in 2015. That program allows foreign agricultural workers to come to the United States, with protections for them and domestic workers doing corresponding jobs. Sun Valley employed ninety-six foreign workers and fifty-one domestic workers. Labor Department investigators said the farm failed to keep promises about housing, transportation, kitchen access, and guaranteed work. For example, workers had been promised free cooking facilities, but the agency found they lacked meaningful kitchen access and were charged for a meal plan instead. A Labor Department administrative law judge ordered more than half a million dollars in civil penalties and back wages, and the department's review board upheld that order. The farm challenged the agency process in federal court. After a district court rejected its claims, the Third Circuit ruled that these money claims had to be decided in an independent federal court, not the agency's own tribunal. The Labor Department now asks the Supreme Court to reverse. Article Three generally reserves federal judicial power to independent courts, but the public-rights doctrine permits some matters to be decided within government agencies. The government will argue that enforcing conditions of permission to hire foreign workers fits that exception. Sun Valley will answer that these are ordinary contract-like claims for money, even if the contracts arose in an immigration program. A separate question is whether Congress actually authorized this kind of in-house adjudication. Judicial review is already available; listen for why the parties disagree about whether that later review is enough, and who should initially decide the facts.

Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards, LLC (No. 25-966) — Supreme Court of the United States, argued November 10, 2026.