"Following the Supreme Court’s recent decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, 603 U.S. 109 (2024), we hold that Sun Valley was entitled to have its case decided by an Article III court."
Usually it is a non-story when lower courts start following a brand new Supreme Court precedent. Not sure why this one is on HN or why even really why it warranted 10,000 words in the original link.
The article spends a lot of time telling us about this fourth generation farm and telling us about workers who quit after one day.
The actual circuit decision says they didn't provide adequate housing -- failing to put insect screens on doors and windows leading to an insect infestation and putting mattresses directly on the floor which is known to create mold. They also failed to provide free food as required and even started selling beverages at profit with no notice you the workers. They are also supposed to provide free transportation but were found to be using drivers who were driving illegally without licenses in all 5 vehicles.
I'm in favor of them getting a trial in a real court but the whole article smells fishy to me and came across as incredibly biased.
Said the USA seems to be going into the consolidation of power. SOTUS has stated that being an expert in a field and subject is meaningless, politicians should have complete say. The continuation of allow tariffs by executive order versus legislative branch, as written in law, is another example of the consolidation of government.
"Citizens are entitled to a jury trial". Is this really the hill you're going to die on — arguing that it's a terrible thing that people are entitled to defend themselves in court?
In the other issue, their representative mistakenly clicked the 'kitchen provided' food option in the paperwork instead of 'meals provided', with the government claiming there was some conspiracy to defraud the employees into taking meals instead of receiving a food stipend, when they'd been providing home cooked meals to the employees for decades, as the DOL had observed countless times.
In both cases, there was no harm to the employees whatsoever.
The article uncritically printed this claim, however we have no reporting from the workers. For all we know they got off easy with the level of fines they received. The article is a press release.
Imagine if OSHA decided to find out about dangerous conditions, allow someone to die, and then punish for that instead of fixing.
Unacceptable.
It happens for the same reason: when organizations get too large, the people running different parts stop communicating effectively, and no one feels directly accountable. But there’s also a reason some companies grow so large in the first place. Scale brings benefits: standardized systems, the ability to hire specialists for every niche role, resources to build infrastructure, etc. These advantages can outweigh the downsides of size for a while.
The difference is that companies hit a natural ceiling. Once the inefficiencies of size outweigh the benefits, they stop being competitive. Smaller firms hold their ground against them. Governments don’t have that check. There’s no competition forcing them to stay efficient, so they can grow far beyond their optimal size and never correct. Our best hope is what happened here: the courts striking down these government overreaches as unconstitutional.
In other words, I do not believe for one second that this farming operation was anything other than a sweatshop, with dangerous conditions and stolen pay. The look on the face of the farmer in the article adds no confidence that this is not the case. For those reading that do not believe that people work in these conditions, in the USA in 2025, then I suggest you do some homework.
You can’t actually tell anything at all about a person’s moral character from their facial expression.
