The constitutional circus ride that is the takings law (a Fifth Amendment right involving government seizing private property for public use, or “eminent domain”) took another turn this week. SCOTUS ruled that a California law granting access to union organizers to farmer property was a taking without just compensation. These farmers employ a largely transient, largely immigrant manual labor force that often seasonally lives on farm property. Union organizers argued they cannot reasonably access these workers and thus these workers are denied their right to join a union. There’s SCOTUS precedent to support this position. There’s also precedent supporting the position that taking private property to build a private shopping mall is not a taking. And there’s precedent that requiring an apartment owner to install a one-inch wide wire is a taking. So who really knows what a taking is.
But what we do know is that California grows a lot of our food, and immigrant laborers do a lot of the work harvesting it. And farmers are not keen on this force getting that nasty organizing bug.