Colorado’s landmark 2021 Farm Worker Bill of Rights enshrined the right of agricultural workers to receive visitors at their employer-owned housing. This includes visitors like lawyers from Colorado Legal Services (CLS), Colorado’s statewide nonprofit legal aid program, who routinely visit with farm workers to inform them of their rights and available resources.
Southern Colorado Farms, LLC and its various labor contractors, including most recently AgSocio, have consistently violated the law and interfered with CLS’s ability to speak with farm workers at their labor camp. This isolated labor camp is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. CLS has received multiple reports in recent years that workers at this camp were not receiving enough food, and that community members tossed bags of food over the razor-wire fence to support them.
But when CLS staff have visited the site, Southern Colorado Farms’ agents have wrongly insisted CLS staff need permission, told them to leave, followed CLS staff around as they spoke to workers, and taken pictures or video of CLS staff. At least twice, Southern Colorado Farms’s agents have suggested that female CLS staff are sex workers rather than legal professionals.
This obstruction, intimidation and retaliation against CLS’s staff is illegal. FarmSTAND is proud to partner with CLS to bring this lawsuit to protect the rights and dignity of Colorado’s farm workers, and the ability of CLS to provide critical services to isolated farm workers.