No jury or independent judge allowed. Welcome to a farmer’s nightmare and the sequestered world of the administrative state.
David and Debbie Ross, facing $70,000 in fines, are demanding a jury trial. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) claims the couple is guilty of mistreating H-2A workers.
The Rosses are trapped within the closed loop of a single agency: Pursuit by DOL agents, enforcement by DOL personnel, trial by DOL attorneys, testimony by DOL witnesses, decision by DOL judge, and review by DOL appellate judges.
“It’s sickening what the government can get away with,” Debbie says. “We’ve done nothing wrong and we want a jury of our peers to hear the evidence. All of it.”
The Rosses are suing DOL, and their case carries heavyweight ramifications for agriculture and beyond. “People might think there’s no way something this unjust happens in America, but it does,” she adds. “It’s happening on our farm to us.’”
Neverending Merry-Go-Round
In the northern Kentucky hills of Harrison County, at Triple R Farms, a small operation started in roughly 1990, the Rosses grow tobacco and corn, and maintain a small cattle herd.
David handles planting and management, but during the fall season, due to the heavy demands of tobacco harvest, he employs a team of H-2A workers sourced from DOL. Housed on-farm, the H-2A workers typically remain at Triple R for several months.
“We’ve always valued the H-2A program,” Debbie says. “Every year, when we finally get all our tobacco in the barn, David has a big pig roast for our H-2A help, most of who come from Mexico. To get charged with mistreatment of anyone working on our farm is ridiculous.”
On December 1, 2021, three DOL agents, as part of a scheduled, annual audit, sat at Debbie’s kitchen table and combed through Triple R paperwork. Debbie, dealing with soreness of muscle and a slight cough, gave them open access.
“They seemed considerate. I provided all our documents and they went out to look at the farm and our housing facilities. Maybe they stayed six hours or so.”
The next day, Debbie and David tested positive for Covid—waylaid by the virus. The remainder of the audit was conducted by email over the next month.
“We got Covid bad—really bad. We went to one hospital multiple times for fluids and another hospital to get infusions,” she explains. “We ended up being physically drained almost the entire month of December, but at least we knew what was wrong.”
What David and Debbie didn’t know? Despite dealing with an anemic farm economy and the effects of ill-time flooding, the couple was about to feel the bureaucratic hammer of DOL and be forced onto the agency’s merry-go-round.
Nothing to Hide
There was no tobacco left to strip—at least not in quantities requiring a volume of H-2A workers.
“It’s pretty simple,” Debbie says. “Heavy rains and flooding ended our tobacco work. We didn’t have tobacco to put up in the barn. We told our H-2A workers they could stay and do other jobs, but they wanted to go home. No problem. It had turned cold and I didn’t blame them. They signed the proper legal forms and voluntarily went back to Mexico. The government now says we fired them. That’s crazy and untrue; we did not.”
The H-2A crew originally was scheduled to leave Jan. 30, 2022. Instead, as described by Debbie, they left December 11, 2021.
“Trying to get all the paperwork done with the workers, while we were at our worst with Covid, was seriously difficult. But we just wanted to do things right by everyone. We had nothing to hide. We want the public to know what happened; DOL does not.”
Dropping a Bomb
The months ticked by with no word from DOL regarding the audit. “I started getting worried that I’d missed something in the mail,” Debbie explains. “Before I knew it, over a year had passed since they visited our farm. I emailed them in January 2023 to check in.”
DOL responded. How about sharing a meal in Harrison County?
“We met the DOL guys at a nice restaurant in town, with no idea about what they were about to do. There was two of them, but later it was obvious that only one of them was an auditing official. The other guy barely said a word and we figured out he was there as backup in case things got out of hand. They knew what they were about to hit us with.”
Seated at a diner, 13 months after visiting Triple R Farms, DOL dropped a bomb and the first mention of any violations: You owe $27,000 in back wages for 11 H-2A workers.
“That’s ridiculous,” David replied. “The H-2A guys didn’t work because they weren’t here. They weren’t here because they wanted to leave.”
“No way,” Debbie added. “The workers left voluntarily. They all signed saying so.”
While delivering the $27,000 penalty at the diner, the DOL rep knew there was a deeper layer to the cake. The $27,000 was a mere portion of the overall penalty.
(DOL did not respond to Agweb.com questions regarding the Ross/Triple R Farms case.)
“They never even told us at the restaurant, but they knew the whole time,” Debbie says. “We owed a further $42,000 in penalties, on top of the $27,000. They never said a word.”
Several weeks later, in late February, a DOL letter arrived in the Ross’ mailbox: You owe another $42,000 for firing H-2A workers, along with associated penalties.
Grand total? $70,049.93.
Pay Up or Bounce
What was the government’s basis for the $70,000-plus?
DOL’s H-2A rules include a three-fourths guarantee “to offer the worker employment for a total number of work hours equal to at least three-fourths of the workdays.”
However, there is no three-fourths guarantee if an H-2A worker “voluntarily abandons employment before the end of the contract period.”
Further, H-2A workers can be released based on farm conditions “beyond the control of the employer due to fire, weather, or other Act of God that makes the fulfillment of the contract impossible, the employer may terminate the work contract.”
“We fired no one,” Debbie emphasizes. “They went home voluntarily. On top of that, we had a flood that meant we didn’t have enough pounds of tobacco to function normally.”
Debbie’s protestations to DOL had no effect. “Our H-2A workers left of their own accord, while we were in terrible health from COVID, and I did my best with the paperwork. DOL blamed me for not calling their office in that moment with details, but it’s a miracle I was able to get the paperwork signed at all, considering we were deathly ill. What were we supposed to do? Force someone to stay? The whole deal is beyond unjust.”
Pay the $70,000 toe-tag or bounce into agency court, according to DOL. “We didn’t have a clue what we were up against,” Debbie says. “The auditors, attorneys, and judges all were from DOL. The same people who made and enforced the rules, were the same people who judged whether we followed the rules. It was a stacked deck like you can’t believe and about as un-American as you can get.”
In the Bull’s-Eye
On March 12, 2026, represented by Institute for Justice (IJ), David and Debbie sued DOL in district court, seeking to stop the agency from forcing the couple into in-house court.
“If DOL wants to impose fines, it should have to go to a real court where the Rosses would get an independent judge and a jury of their peers,” says IJ attorney Rob Johnson.
“DOL is forcing a farm family to defend itself against a huge, punishing fine in the agency’s own in-house courts, where the only judge they can get is an agency bureaucrat,” Johnson continues. “That, in no way, is a fair or just proceeding.”
Is Johnson correct? He’s absolutely in the bull’s-eye, says the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Dark Hole
In a seismic 2024 ruling, SEC v. Jarkesy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that citizens are entitled to a jury trial when hit with civil penalties imposed by administrative law judges.
Jarkesy tore down the walls of in-house courts, where the federal government (including USDA-NRCS) has sky-high win rates. In 2015, former FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright shed light on a phenomenally high agency win rate from roughly 1995 to 2015: “In 100 percent of cases where the administrative law judge ruled in favor of the FTC staff, the Commission (appeals board) affirmed liability; and in 100 percent of the cases in which the administrative law judge found no liability, the Commission reversed. This is a strong sign of an unhealthy and biased (emphasis added) institutional process.”
DOL’s in-house system levies major penalties: In 2024 alone, according to an IJ release, DOL collected $4.9 million in back wages and imposed $5.8 million in penalties on agricultural employers. In many cases, DOL does not return money to workers, but either keeps it or passes it to Congress.
Echoing Jarkesy, and similar to the Ross case, brothers Joe and Russell Marino, owners of Sun Valley Orchards in New Jersey and represented by IJ, challenged DOL (Sun Valley v. DOL) after a nine-year, bureaucratic grind centered on an H-2A paperwork violation and over $500,000 in fines. In July 2025, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that DOL violated the Constitution and that charges against the Marinos had to be brought in an independent court. (DOL is contesting the ruling and asking SCOTUS to hear the case.)
Joe Marino contends he was deemed guilty out of the gate by DOL. “They took us down a dark, dark hole that I can’t describe properly with words,” he described after his court victory. “I never thought honesty and facts wouldn’t matter in America, but that’s what happened. We were presumed guilty from the start, and it’s shameful what they did to us.”
Yet, if the U.S. Supreme Court and the 3rd Circuit both ruled on the unconstitutionality of in-house courts, why are David and Debbie Ross still trapped behind DOL walls and denied a trial by jury?
Real Court, Real Jury
The Ross case was assigned to DOL Judge Willow Fort, a long-time DOL player. According to the Rosses’ complaint, Fort “has been employed by DOL for over half of her legal career ... She worked as a trial attorney in the DOL’s Office of the Regional Solicitor representing the Secretary of Labor in enforcement actions beginning in 2011, and was appointed as a DOL ALJ in Cincinnati, Ohio in November 2021.”
Fort has denied the Rosses’ requests for a jury trial and is proceeding with an in-house DOL trial, and scheduled the next hearing for September 2026—during the middle of harvest.
“This has got to stop,” Johnson says. “Right now, we have agencies across the administrative state that are just trying to come up with excuses and distinctions to not apply Jarkesy. The Ross case is certainly one where the U.S. Supreme Court justices have said one thing, but the administrative state is doing another. It’s up to the courts to force the bureaucrats in this country to follow the law. These types of cases are happening across the country.”
“Bottom line,” Johnson adds, “if the government wants to take your money, they should have to take you to a real court with a real jury, and not an agency bureaucrat.
As for Debbie, she contends DOL’s actions are “outrageous and abusive.”
“We live year to year in farming, and can’t survive by losing $70,000. My husband is 69 and I’m 65, and we farm with tremendous risk and make just enough to keep going every year. David has had triple bypass surgery and five stints, and I’ve had open heart surgery for a bad valve, and the stress of this, on top of the fines, is almost too much to handle. We’re not afraid to work daylight to dark, but then government does this to us? Maybe $70,000 is not so much to some people, but it’s everything to us.”
“I actually thought we could explain the facts and somebody at DOL would listen,” she adds. “Now I know better. But if DOL won’t listen, we should be entitled to a jury and judge that will listen.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
