Colorado lawmakers are considering stripping protections for the state’s farmworkers amid an avian flu crisis and widespread abuses in the agricultural industry.
A bipartisan bill introduced this month would repeal key provisions from a landmark Farmworker Bill of Rights signed into law four years ago. SB21-87 provided a host of new protections for Colorado’s farmworkers, including prohibiting employers from interfering with agricultural laborers’ access to service providers such as health care workers, legal advocates, educators and clergy during breaks or off-hours.
Bill sponsors, though, argue a 2021 Supreme Court ruling makes these provisions unconstitutional. In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, the conservative majority ruled a California law granting labor organizations a right to access an agricultural employer’s property to solicit support for unionization to be unconstitutional.
Senate Bill 25-128 — sponsored by Sens. Byron Pelton, a Sterling Republican, and Dylan Roberts, an Avon Democrat — argues the Supreme Court decision also invalidates the service access provision of Colorado’s law.
“We’re just following what the law says and cleaning up our statute from the Supreme Court decision,” Pelton said in an interview.
Farmworker advocates and service providers say the legislature is acting out of turn. A Colorado judge previously rejected efforts to invalidate these provisions, with the case up for appeal.
Despite this denial, farmers are now bringing “unfounded and legally incorrect claims to the legislature when really they belong in court,” said Kelsey Eberly, a senior staff attorney at FarmSTAND, a legal advocacy organization litigating this issue. “This bill is legislator overreach, circumventing an ongoing legal review of this law. It’s fundamentally about stripping farmworkers of gains made in the 2021 measure. It’s alarming.”
Project Protect Food Systems Workers, an organization that fights for food worker justice, says Colorado’s law is fundamentally different than California’s statute. While that law granted union organizers entry onto private property for labor organizing during work hours, Colorado’s law ensures all types of social service providers can meet with farmworkers during off-hours.
Landon Gates, a lobbyist representing numerous Colorado agricultural organizations, said the Supreme Court decision clearly includes Colorado’s provision.
“It doesn’t do the industry or the state any good to continue in long, protracted court proceedings that will cost the industry and the state a lot of money,” he said.
Ana Schultz worries about what this repeal would mean for farmworkers across Colorado. She leads a team of outreach workers for Project Protect, bringing laborers food, personal protective equipment, water bottles and hats. The organization also partners with Colorado Legal Services to educate workers about overtime and wage laws.
“Even with the law saying that workers are allowed to have assistance, we have owners that blatantly say ‘you’re not welcome here,’ ” Schultz said. “If the law were to be repealed, I assume that there will be more resistance for us to visit the sites.”
The 2021 law has been effective at helping marginalized workers who spend long hours in the fields and have little time to access necessary social services, said Jenifer Rodriguez, managing attorney for the Migrant Farm Worker Division of Colorado Legal Services. Lawyers can bring documents for their clients to sign. Fathers can do parent-teacher conferences.
Project Protect says the bill would be a “major step backward” in the fight for farmworker protections. These guardrails are even more necessary now, the organization argues, due to the avian flu, which has ravaged poultry and cattle across the country and has infected small numbers of agricultural workers.
Undocumented workers also need more services brought to them due to fear of going out in public in light of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation pledge, service providers say.
“Ensuring that all farmworkers have access to service providers is not just a workers’ rights issue — it is a public health and economic stability issue,” the Agricultural Workers’ Rights Coalition wrote in a letter to state lawmakers this month.
A Denver Post investigation last year found farmworkers consistently face verbal and physical abuse, wage theft and squalid living conditions. Many are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs.
The bill has been introduced in the Senate and will appear Thursday before the Agriculture & Natural Resources committee.
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