Judge rejects Perdue Farms’ NC-based suits against US Labor Department

A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits Perdue Farms filed against the US Labor Department to block whistleblower proceedings involving two Robeson County poultry farmers.

US District Judge Louise Flanagan issued a ruling Monday siding with farmers Craig Watts and Rudy Howell, along with the Labor Department and its Office of Administrative Law Judges.

A January 2025 order had rejected Perdue’s requests for injunctions. As the plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, the company sought to block ALJproceedings linked to Watts’ and Howell’s whistleblower arguments.

“Plaintiff argues that the DOL’s adjudicatory structure violates its Seventh Amendment rights, the Supreme Court’s decision in Jarkesy, and Article III of the Constitution,” Flanagan wrote Monday, citing a 2024 US Supreme Court precedent. “Defendants counter that these claims fail as a matter of law under the analytical framework established in Jarkesy to assess these issues. The court agrees with defendants.”

Watts and Howell both contracted with Perdue to raise poultry for the company on their Fairmont-area farms. Both men ran afoul of Perdue after drawing public attention to their complaints about the company.

“For years, Watts complained about the amount of compensation he agreed to accept in this contract, ‘to no avail,’” Flanagan wrote. “In May 2014, Watts invited to his farm a film crew from a third-party organization to film chicks on his farm, which were in ‘deplorable condition.’ The third party then edited the footage into a video and released it to national news media coverage.”

Perdue blamed Watts for the chicks’ condition and mandated additional training before he could acquire a new flock. Watts filed a whistleblower complaint in 2015.

“Beginning in 2020, Howell invited public health and animal rights advocates onto his farm to observe and film allegedly deplorable conditions for the animals, plaintiff’s alleged disregard therefor, and various forms of animal abuse, neglect, and cruelty which Howell attributed to plaintiff,” Flanagan wrote.

Perdue terminated its contact with Howell, who followed that action with a whistleblower complaint.

In a 2015 whistleblower complaint based on the federal Food Safety Modernization Act, Watts “claimed that Perdue retaliated against him after he publicly alleged that Perdue had provided him with sick and dying birds,” US District Judge Terrence Boyle wrote in January 2025.

“Watts invited a film crew to his farm to film the conditions of chickens in his chicken houses, which Watts contends were housed pursuant to Perdue’ s rules and restrictions,” Boyle wrote.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration rejected Watts’ complaint in 2016, determining that Watts was not a Perdue employee covered by the laws that would give OSHA jurisdiction over his complaint. After “years of administrative litigation,” Watts secured a hearing before a Labor Department administrative law judge, Boyle wrote.

Howell filed a similar complaint in 2021, later dismissed by OSHA. Howell also secured a hearing before a Labor Department administrative law judge.

Perdue filed suit in the Watts case in August 2024 and the Howell case in October 2024. “In both cases, Perdue seeks a preliminary injunction to stop the DOJ ALJ proceedings pending the constitutional challenges raised by Perdue in its complaints,” Boyle explained. “In its complaints, Perdue seeks declaratory and injunctive relief and alleges that the DOL administrative proceedings are unconstitutional on several grounds.”

The suits argued that Labor Department proceedings “violate Article III; that they violate Perdue’s right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment; … that they violate the President’s removal authority under Article II ; that they violate the nondelegation doctrine and separation of powers under Article I; and that they violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” Boyle added.

Boyle questioned Perdue’s need for an injunction.

“Perdue’s inaction in pursuing its claims undercuts its contention that it will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction,” the judge wrote. “Perdue has been litigating the Watts case since 2015 and the Howell case since 2021. Delay in seeking preliminary injunctive relief, which is designed to address a party’s ‘urgent need for the protection of [its] rights,’ demonstrates an ‘absence of the kind of irreparable harm required to support a preliminary injunction.’”

“Perdue raises core constitutional issues in its complaint, but simply raising a constitutional claim does not entitle a party to the ‘extraordinary and drastic remedy’ of a preliminary injunction,” Boyle added.

“In addition to a lack of urgency, Perdue has failed to persuasively argue that any harm that it suffers through the administrative proceedings would be irreparable,” according to Boyle’s order.

“Congress enacted whistle blower protections in the FSMA as part of a comprehensive scheme aimed at protecting the public from unsafe food,” the judge wrote. “The equities do not weigh in favor of disrupting the administrative whistleblower procedures which have been in place since 2011 in order to further Congress’s objectives.”

“While, as Perdue contends, the public interest certainly aligns with vindicating constitutional rights, in this context, where Perdue has an avenue of review of its constitutional claims, the final factor cuts in favor of the defendants,” the order continued.

“Judge rejects Perdue Farms’ NC-based suits against US Labor Department” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.