A California regulation allowing labor organizers to disrupt businesses for hours every day for one third of the year to recruit new members is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines.
“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for property rights,” Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) senior attorney Joshua Thompson said in a press release. The decision “affirms that one of the most fundamental aspects of property is the right to decide who can and can’t access your property.”
PLF is a national public interest law firm based in Sacramento that represented farmers challenging the law.
The ruling is likely to have major repercussions for labor and property law well beyond agribusiness.
The Cato Institute, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, called the ruling the “biggest Supreme Court win for property rights in a long, long time.”
Conversely, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern described it as “a crushing blow to organized labor, which often relies on workplace access to safeguard workers’ rights.”
The ruling “undermines the broader legal framework that permits the government to impose all manner of regulations on private property, including workplace safety laws and nondiscrimination requirements,” Stern wrote, and hands “business owners a loaded gun to aim at every regulation they oppose.”
‘Most Disruptive Event’
The decision in the case, Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, court file 20-107, came June 23.
The petitioners were Cedar Point Nursery, a strawberry farm in Dorris, Calif, and Fowler Packing Co. Inc., in Fresno, Calif., which produces grapes and mandarin oranges. Together, they employ about 3,000 people. The lead respondent is Victoria Hassid, a Democrat, in her capacity as head of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
“In the United States, everyone has a sovereign right—or should have the sovereign right—to determine who can and cannot come onto your property,” Mike Fahner, owner of Cedar Point Nursery, previously told The Epoch Times’ “Crossroads” program. “Well, we’ve been stripped of that in agriculture in the state of California.”
