Snake River Farmers' Ass'n, Inc. v. Department of Labor, NAGAY-JAIME

Decision Date09 November 1993
Docket NumberNos. 91-35885,92-35074,NAGAY-JAIME,s. 91-35885
Citation9 F.3d 792
PartiesSNAKE RIVER FARMERS' ASSOCIATION, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR; Lynn Martin, Secretary of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor; G. Edward Leslie, Employment and Training Administration; Ruth Kapetan, Certifying Officer, U.S. Department of Labor; Richard Thornburg, Attorney General of the United States; Immigration and Naturalization Service, Defendants-Appellees, v. Louis NAPOLES; Manuel Ojeda; Filemon Ballesteros, Jr., Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants. SNAKE RIVER FARMERS' ASSOCIATION, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, et al., Defendants, and Filemon Ballesteros, Jr., et al., Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants. Alejandro; Margarito Bahena Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, et al., Defendants, and Snake River Farmers' Association, Inc., Defendant-Intervenor-Appellee. & 92-35075.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Javier Riojas, Texas Rural Legal Aid, Inc., Eagle Pass, TX, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Thomas E. Wilson, Christopher A. Weals, Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson, Washington, DC, for plaintiff-appellee.

John S. Koppel, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendants-appellees.

Barbara McDowell, Susan M. Green, Migrant Legal Action Program, Washington, DC, for defendants-intervenor-appellants.

Before BOOCHEVER, DAVID R. THOMPSON, and KLEINFELD, Circuit Judges.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Idaho.

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge:

The district court properly dismissed this case for lack of standing. The appellant- intervenors, farmworkers, lack an injury in fact likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Two of them suffered no injury from the harm complained of, and the third seeks relief which would be of no benefit to himself. We therefore lack jurisdiction to consider the dispute on the merits.

I. Facts.

This case was started by the farmers, not the farmworkers. The Snake River Farmers' Association sued the Secretary of Labor to obtain changes in the terms upon which the Department of Labor allowed the farmers to employ foreign workers. For a portion of the year, the farmers employ hundreds of farmworkers to operate their irrigation systems. The government allows the farmers to bring foreign workers into the country if there are not sufficient domestic workers available, and the employment of the foreign workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed United States workers. 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1188(a) (1988).

To hire foreign workers, farmers must submit proposed wage schedules to the Department of Labor's Regional Administrator. The Regional Administrator certifies a minimum wage rate which must be paid "for a particular occupation and/or area ... so that the wages of similarly employed U.S. workers will not be adversely affected." 20 C.F.R. Sec. 655.100(b) (1992). Occupational qualifications proposed by employers are similarly reviewed and certified by the Regional Administrator. Id. Sec. 655.102(c). Basically, the Department of Labor puts a floor under wages so foreign workers will not depress the wages and working conditions of Americans. The farmers' employment offers to domestic and foreign farmworkers, termed "clearance orders" in the government's jargon, must be on terms at least as favorable to the workers as the Department of Labor minimums.

The Snake River Farmers' Association submitted several clearance orders with proposed wage schedules and job requirements to the Department of Labor's Regional Administrator for certification. The Regional Administrator approved the job qualification requirements, but rejected the wage proposals. In response, the farmers sued the government, claiming that the Department of Labor's requirements were arbitrary, and that the Administrator should have issued the certificates the farmers needed to get foreign workers into the country on the farmers' proposed terms.

The wage rates at issue were for irrigation workers in five counties in Idaho. The farmers' fields are irrigated by means of portable water lines, which the workers move from one location to another. The wage rate for irrigation work depends on various factors, including the size and type of the line a worker is assigned to move.

Wheel lines may be of any length, but have a motorized wheel to help move them. As the district judge explained,

A center-move irrigation line has a motor at the center of the line which requires the worker to enter the field to operate the motor. An end-move irrigation line allows the worker to attach a portable motor to the end of the wheel-line and thereby avoid the extra time it takes to enter the field.

Snake River Farmers' Ass'n v. United States Dep't of Labor, No. 9-0075, slip op. at 15, 1991 WL 539566 (D.Idaho Oct. 1, 1991). Difficulty varies with quality and age of the equipment, length of the line to be moved, and geography of the terrain.

Hand lines have diameters of three or four inches, and have no attached wheel to facilitate movement. Hand-line workers are normally assigned to work on a particular diameter of line, i.e., they are assigned to work on either four-inch or three-inch lines, but usually not both.

The farmers proposed wage rates that varied depending on the type of line and the county in which the work was to be done. They sought lower rates for flat counties than for hilly counties. They also proposed qualifications that would require twenty days of irrigation-line experience, attested to by one reference. A farmworker who could not meet the twenty-day experience requirement was to be an "apprentice irrigator" at a lower wage rate for the first twenty days of employment. The Department of Labor disagreed with parts of the farmers' proposed wage schedule, and imposed one with less variation in pay for geographical and line-type differences than the farmers thought reflective of the market.

The farmers sought judicial review of the Department of Labor's wage-rate determinations. United States workers Alejandro Nagay-Jaime, Margarito Bahena, and Filemon Ballesteros, Jr. intervened and sued separately in an action consolidated with the farmers' lawsuit. The workers asserted that the wage schedules proposed by both the farmers and the Department of Labor were violative of the applicable legal standards, and that the Department of Labor should not have approved the farmers' experience requirement. The workers attempted to convert the case into a class action, but the district court denied certification. The three appealing intervenors do not appeal denial of their proposed farmworker class certification.

The farmers and the workers filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the farmers, finding that the Department of Labor was arbitrary and capricious in rejecting the farmers' proposed wage schedule. It dismissed the workers' claims for lack of standing, and in the alternative, ruled against them on the merits. Both the Department of Labor and the workers appealed, but the Department of Labor later dismissed its appeal. Therefore, only the workers' claims are before this court for review.

II. Analysis.

Because we affirm the district court's decision on the ground that the appellants lacked standing, we do not reach the other issues raised on appeal. We do not decide the merits of the wage schedule. Standing is a question of law reviewed de novo. United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, & Allied Trades No. 40 v. Insurance Corp. of Am., 919 F.2d 1398, 1399 (9th Cir.1990).

Federal courts require standing because federal "judicial Power" is limited to "cases" and "Controversies." See U.S. Const. art. III, Sec. 2; Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750-51, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3324-25, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). The federal courts lack power to make a decision unless the plaintiff has suffered an injury in fact, traceable to the challenged action, and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.

[T]he irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements: First, the plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact"--an invasion of a legally-protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) "actual or imminent, not 'conjectural' or 'hypothetical.' " Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of--the injury has to be "fairly ... trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not ... th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court." Third, it must be "likely," as opposed to merely "speculative," that the injury will be "redressed by a favorable decision."

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (alterations in original) (citations omitted); see also Fernandez v. Brock, 840 F.2d 622, 625 (9th Cir.1988) (reciting same requirements for standing).

A defendant's violation of a statutory duty is not enough--the judiciary lacks power to correct the executive branch on the petition of one who is without an injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the executive action and likely to be redressed by the requested relief. See Fernandez, 840 F.2d at 625; Madsen v. Boise State, 976 F.2d 1219, 1221-22 (9th Cir.1992). The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of establishing standing, and in response to a summary judgment motion must provide cognizable evidence of specific facts, not mere allegations. Lujan, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2137.

The district court correctly concluded that the three appellants lacked standing. Each of the three appellants lacks at least one critical element of standing, although the elements lacking vary between plaintiffs.

Ballesteros challenges the wage rates for wheel-line and four-inch hand-line moves in two counties. Howe...

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