If you ever need an example of how obscenely out-of-control the government can be (even under Republican control!) look no further than the case of Sun Valley Orchards.
The farm journal AgWeb reports that the Marino family founded and worked the New Jersey farm after arriving in the U.S. around 1900. From "a toehold in dirt to an expanse of 3,000 acres, four generations of Marinos grew vegetables" at the farm near Swedesboro.
This was an intimate, long-cherished family endeavor, and also a big operation, complete with daily tractor-trailer loads of produce being shipped all around the country as well as an on-site processing facility.
Like many U.S. farms, the Marinos several years ago turned to seasonal workers under the federal H-2A Temporary Agriculture Worker Program in order to shore up staffing gaps.
The farm was subject to regular inspections from the Department of Labor, as is customary, though brothers Joe and Russ were unsettled in mid-2015 when DOL workers showed up and stayed for an uncharacteristically long four-day inspection.
The farm didn't receive any citations that year. Next year, however, the government sent in a cadre of inspectors, who pulled the rug out from under the family:
Seated in the Sun Valley farm office on opposite sides of a large desk, the tiny space separating two farmers and three federal bureaucrats was chasmic. Minutes beyond a handshake and greeting, the D.C. director dropped a bomb, accusing Sun Valley of mistreating H-2A workers: You owe $550,000 in back wages and civil penalty fines.
Evidently, the year prior, a group of temporary workers had walked off the farm after they decided that asparagus harvesting was too difficult. After consulting with an H-2A advisor, the brothers let the workers quit and go home.
But the Department of Labor somehow interpreted this decision as the farm having "fired its H-2A workers without compensation." It also alleged that the brothers "stole food money from their pockets," which the brothers strongly denied, arguing that the misunderstanding was nothing more than a simple paperwork error.
The government wasn't hearing it. It wanted the money. And it was going to get it, even if it had to keep the family in a dark, under-the-radar court system to do it:
The Marinos bounced into a fixed government game. No jury of peers allowed to hear the evidence; no independent judge allowed to hear the case. Essentially, DOL fined the Marino brothers $550,000 ($212,250 in civil penalties and $369,703 in back wages) without having to prove anything beyond agency walls. ...
At a week-long trial in July 2017, Joe and Russell faced the agency machine in a DOL courtroom before a DOL judge who was a former DOL attorney. "It's incestuous," Joe contends. "That's how all our government agencies operate and maintain power. They play judge, jury, and executioner."
Part of the "Mickey Mouse trial," the brothers said, involved a "human rights rep" locating three workers in Mexico and having them appear via video in the trial. Yet "not a single witness said they'd been fired," Joe Marino said. Still, the government found them guilty.
Facing ruinous fees, the Marinos were thrown a lifeline by the Institute for Justice, a pro-liberty legal group that stepped in to stop the government's obscene roughshod ride over this family farm.
IJ attorney Bob Belden wasn't sleeping on the outrage:
This case doesn't need flowery explanations. When people hear the details, they quickly recognize it's wrong to have government actors trying to take money or property from you as a punishment, and the same government actors getting to decide if you are guilty. That is as un-American as you can get.
As IJ was shepherding the farmers through the endless legal process, another lifeline arose: the 2024 SCOTUS ruling in SEC v. Jarkesy that held citizens "are entitled to a jury trial when hit with civil penalties imposed by administrative law judges."
In July of this year, a federal appeals court subsequently ruled that the Department of Labor was violating the Constitution in its strong-arming of the Marino family.
Yet it all came years too late:
A perfect storm of weather and depressed markets from 2019-2021, in tandem with DOL fines and legal fees, crushed Sun Valley. In December 2021, the Marino farming operation — from shovel to tractor to combine to land — went under the gavel. For the last time, the brothers cranked their farm machinery and lined up the vehicles for public purchase.
Over a century's worth of family investment and involvement, down the drain in less than half a decade.
Yet to their great credit, the Marino boys are looking forward:
'In the end, we got our good name cleared, but more important than that, I'm truly thankful because I know our case will help others down the road, and there are people right now enduring this same kind of government abuse,' Joe adds. 'It's time for the weaponization of our government agencies to stop.'
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