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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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...

Everyone should be able to work with dignity and access resources that better their working conditions and lives. However, agribusiness interests have threatened Colorado farmworkers’ right to access essential services where they work. Agricultural workers tend to be isolated and work long hours. Many live...

Food & Water Watch, represented by FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice), filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against Smithfield Foods, alleging that the multinational meat processing company repeatedly lied to consumers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic so...

Amazon is one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world—yet its policies deprive its delivery drivers of basic labor rights, including the right to bathroom breaks. Under Amazon’s brutal work quotas and elaborate surveillance systems, many drivers resort to urinating in bottles...