Cases

A just, healthy, and thriving food system requires transparency. Public Justice engages in litigation to strike down the Ag-Gag laws that penalize whistleblowers who expose the truth about the factory farm system.

In 2025, USDA abandoned farmers by recklessly terminating millions of dollars in grants, all to fall in line with the Trump administration’s crusade against DEI, environmental justice, and climate action. We suspected that the “process” for finding grants the administration found worthy of termination was hardly more than a simple search through grant documents for words it associated with diversity, equity, inclusion, or climate change. Now we can prove it.

Hormel wants you to make the “Natural Choice.” Documents we’ve made public reveal how that is anything but.

Farmers and ranchers have beef with the checkoff, the system responsible for slogans like “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner,” “The Incredible, Edible Egg,” and "Got Milk?" Food checkoff programs penalize independent producers of food by funneling money to the lobbying and trade organizations that boost the largest corporate producers, according to research featured in this edition of FarmSTAND’s Deep Dive series. In the course of our litigation to reform the checkoff system on behalf of independent ranchers, we commissioned groundbreaking research that shows it’s possible to have a checkoff that’s fair for all farmers.

JBS, the largest meat company in the world, exploited over 1,000 Haitian workers recruited under false pretenses for its Greeley, Colorado plant to boost corporate profits. Starting in late 2023, JBS began recruiting Haitians via TikTok, promising employment without English language requirements and free housing...

Everyone should be able to work in conditions that are dignified, fair, and healthy, and getting injured at work should never mean losing your income or ability to take care of your family. However, for the past 17 years undocumented workers in Michigan who suffer serious workplace injuries have been unjustly denied workers’ compensation wages while they are recovering.

Colorado’s landmark 2021 Farm Worker Bill of Rights enshrined the right of agricultural workers to receive visitors at their housing, including employer-owned housing. This includes visitors like lawyers from Colorado Legal Services (CLS), Colorado’s statewide nonprofit legal aid program, who routinely attempt to visit with farm workers to inform them of their rights and available resources.

Industrialized meat production generates tremendous volumes of climate-warming emissions at every stage of the process. Tyson, which produces about 20 percent of U.S. beef, chicken and pork, has greenhouse gas emissions that exceed those of Austria or Greece. For over three years, Tyson had been promoting a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and for over a year, it had marketed “climate-smart beef.” Yet by all indications, Tyson has no credible plan to slash its staggering emissions, nor has it explained how its emissions-intensive industrialized beef could ever be a smart choice for the climate.

Under the Trump Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has betrayed workers by stopping investigations into disparate-impact discrimination charges, illegally abandoning decades of civil rights precedent. Disparate impact refers to a policy that is not justified by business needs that has an unequal impact...

Utility companies shouldn’t be allowed to exploit public concern about climate change to prop up polluting factory farms. Customers of Oregon’s Northwest Natural Gas are suing the company over misleading claims at the heart of its Smart Energy program, which the company advertises as a...

Represented by FarmSTAND, Legal Aid of Nebraska, and Radford Scott LLP, these three Guatemalan men are suing Livingston Enterprises and Worldwide Farmers Exchange, the company that deceptively recruited them. The lawsuit targets a practice that has allowed employers like Livingston to exploit the J-1 visa program for profit, and alleges that these enterprises violated federal trafficking, racketeering, and civil rights laws, as well as state laws.