Cases

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.

This case was a dispute over the dramatic expansion of a dairy operation. The authority of local government hung in the balance.

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.

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...

Clean water is essential for communities and ecosystems to thrive. Unfortunately, the dominant industrial food system degrades our nation’s waters at every step, including slaughter and processing. The Agri Star Meat & Poultry meatpacking facility in Postville, Iowa, has been violating its Clean Water Act permit and illegally polluting the nearby Hecker Creek and Yellow River.

Agricultural workers of all kinds —including seasonal workers on H-2A visas — deserve basic workplace protections, including the right to meet with guests and service providers in the workers’ employer-provided housing without fear of retaliation and protection from injury during their commutes to work.

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 has been...

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.

Agribusinesses exploit poultry contract growers to hold down costs and maximize company profits. The growers—the farmers who actually do the work of producing the birds—assume the risks of the business, while the big companies who contract them reap the profits of the labor and avoid...

Workers deserve to be safe on the job and to participate in OSHA inspections of their workplace.

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

FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice) represented a mass action of poultry growers in Western Kentucky who raise poultry for Tyson, the nation’s largest poultry company. Tyson acts as an “integrator,” controlling all of the inputs used by its poultry growers—such as the...