The government has fined you more than $550,000—most of it for an alleged paperwork violation. You are a small business owner, so the only universe where you can pay that is a parallel one. And when you challenge that determination, you're fed a rotten cherry on top: The same agency that hit you with those penalties also gets to play judge and jury.
That's what happened to Joe and Russell Marino, the brothers who own Sun Valley Orchards, who eked out a win last week when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that they're entitled to have their case heard in an independent federal court. The decision represents a turning of the tide when it comes to the fairness of such proceedings, where in-house judges have long evaluated penalties imposed by the very agency that employs them.
Sun Valley Orchards came under the scrutiny of the Department of Labor (DOL) in 2015, when inspectors visited the business to see if it was conforming with an employment agreement formed under the H-2A nonimmigrant visa program. The farm had provided workers with a meal plan, the investigators noted, while the paperwork for the job order said employees would purchase their own food and cook it in the kitchen. For that, the agency assessed $198,450 in monetary penalties and $128,285 (the price of the meals) in back wages, even though it is perfectly legal for such businesses to offer meal plans—many do—and even though the meal plan offered by Sun Valley was cheaper than the ceiling allowed under Labor Department regulations.
