NJ Superior Court Denies State’s Attempt to Dismiss Farmworker Complaint Seeking to End Wage and Overtime Discrimination

In an important step forward for worker protections and immigrants’ rights in New Jersey, a Superior Court judge has denied the State’s motion to dismiss claims that exclusions in wage and hour laws denying farmworkers equal wages and overtime protection are discriminatory and violate the state constitution's prohibition on special laws. The opinion, written by Presiding Judge Patrick J. Bartels of the Chancery Division of the Superior Court in Mercer County, is available here.

The ACLU of New Jersey, the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU Racial Justice Program, and the Seton Hall Law School Center for Social Justice filed the complaint on behalf of El Comité de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agrícolas (CATA) – a grassroots organization advocating to improve the working and living conditions of farmworkers – seeking injunctive relief and declaratory judgment for violations of equal protection under the New Jersey Constitution.

“This decision brings us closer to achieving economic justice for farmworkers, who have been denied equal wage and overtime protections for decades despite the critical role they play in making New Jersey the Garden State,” said ACLU-NJ Legal Director Jeanne LoCicero. “Farmworkers deserve a shot at making their case, and now they will get it.”

New Jersey’s Wage and Hour Law (WHL) denies farmworkers the same wage and overtime protections guaranteed to other New Jerseyans. Despite amending the law in 2019 to increase the minimum wage to $15 beginning in 2024, legislators disqualified farmworkers from equivalent protection, setting a lower minimum wage and instituting only incremental wage increases. Under the law, farmworkers’ wages will not reach parity with the statewide minimum wage until 2030.

“This ruling is just the beginning of vindicating the rights of farmworkers in New Jersey who have faced decades of wage discrimination,” said Jessica Culley, General Coordinator at CATA. “Especially in this moment, when immigrant communities are being brutalized across the country and our local communities experience raids on a nearly weekly basis, New Jersey must begin treating farmworkers with the same dignity and respect it affords similar workers.”

In prior cases, the New Jersey Supreme Court has recognized that farmworkers – the vast majority of whom are Latine and members of the immigrant community – warrant special judicial consideration because they are among the state’s most marginalized residents: farmworkers in New Jersey receive low wages, have little union representation, and many cannot vote in elections. This reality makes farmworkers especially vulnerable to unfair workplace treatment, which is demonstrated by their exclusion from the wage and hour protections that the state guarantees to others.

“We are glad that the court has taken the first step toward ensuring that New Jersey's hardworking farmworkers get the same basic wage protections as other New Jerseyans,” said Noelle Smith, Skadden Fellow at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “It's clear that employers should be paying farmworkers a fair wage for their critical work.”

“This is a momentous step forward in protecting the rights of some of NJ’s most vulnerable workers,” said Jenny-Brooke Condon, Professor of Law and Director of Seton Hall Law School’s Equal Justice Clinic. “It reaffirms that our State Constitution is a source of broad protection independent of the Federal Constitution.”

Not only do the wage and overtime exclusions at the center of this complaint harm a particularly vulnerable group, they also mirror federal policies that were intentionally designed to perpetuate racial discrimination. New Jersey lawmakers modeled the WHL’s farmworker exclusions on equivalent exclusions in the Fair Labor Standards Act and other New Deal labor laws – both designed to specifically exclude Black and minority workers.

“This decision shows that New Jersey’s exclusion of farmworkers from basic wage and overtime protections is unjustified. For decades, farmworkers have been denied the dignity, equality, and protections guaranteed to other workers in this state,” said Alejandro Agustín Ortiz, Senior Counsel at the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “This ruling is a victory for racial and economic justice, and for the thousands of workers whose labor sustains our communities.”