NC Policy Watch: “A federal district court judge on Wednesday entered a permanent injunction against a provision from the North Carolina Farm Act of 2017 that invalidated lawsuit settlements in which parties agree to recognize union representation of farmworkers as part of the agreement. The challenged provision was passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper in July of 2017 as part of an omnibus 24-page bill.
Advocacy groups filed suit challenging the anti-union provision in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in November of 2017 on behalf of two farmworkers and the state’s only farmworker union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).
[Note: NC Justice Center, the parent organization of Policy Watch, was among the organizations and law firms representing the plaintiffs in the suit.]
Plaintiffs claimed that FLOC had been deprived by the law of at least one opportunity to “assist members who have potential employment claims to negotiate with their employer for a prefiling settlement of such claims.”
In the complaint, counsel for the plaintiffs argued that the ban on making union representation a part of settlements strips farmworkers from securing settlement terms in their best interest, a right enjoyed by other private sector employees.
In reviewing and approving the decision of the Magistrate Judge to which the case was initially assigned, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs previously held that the challenged provision violates the First Amendment and first-amendment-related protections of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. On Wednesday, she permanently enjoined the state from seeking to enforce it.”