A major Washington State fruit company accused of forcing migrant workers into labor then asked a federal court to lock away every piece of evidence its own workers had gathered against it, so those workers’ lawyers could never use it again.

Who Is Stemilt, and What Did Their Workers Accuse Them Of?

The Facts Stemilt AG Services, LLC is a subsidiary of one of the largest fruit-growing operations in Washington State. The company uses the federal H-2A visa program to import temporary agricultural workers, primarily from Mexico, to harvest and process its crops. These workers come to the United States on a visa tied entirely to their employer, which means if they lose the job, they lose the right to stay in the country.

The Misconduct Farmworkers Gilberto Gomez Garcia and Jonathan Gomez Rivera initiated a class action lawsuit in 2020, alleging that Stemilt engaged in forced labor and trafficking. A second group of farmworkers filed a separate lawsuit against the company in 2022. Both suits were eventually consolidated into a single case, with ten named plaintiffs: Margarito Fierro Cordero, Fernando Mendez Franco, Jose Rodriguez Llerenas, Sandro Vargas Leyva, Victor Padilla Plascencia, Jose Mendoza Anguiano, Fernando Martinez Perez, Jose Gallegos Gonzalez, Hector Bautista Salinas, and Bismark Zepeda Perez.

The legal organization representing all of these workers was Columbia Legal Services, a part of Washington State’s Alliance for Equal Justice. Columbia provides legal aid to low-income, vulnerable, and marginalized communities, and its work includes courtroom litigation as well as legislative advocacy and community education. These lawyers fight for people who cannot afford to fight for themselves, which made what Stemilt did next especially revealing.

The Case Settled. The Cover-Up Attempt Did Not.

The underlying lawsuit ultimately settled. The workers resolved their claims against Stemilt and the case was dismissed with prejudice in 2023. But before that settlement was finalized, the federal district court had issued a sweeping protective order that went far beyond protecting private data. The court ordered that Columbia Legal Services must seek the court’s permission before using any information obtained through discovery in any other advocacy context, and warned it would grant that permission only in “limited circumstances.”

Columbia refused to accept that restriction as a condition of the settlement. The organization appealed the protective order in its own name, arguing the suppression of evidence violated the foundational legal principle that information produced in civil discovery is presumptively public. The Ninth Circuit agreed.

The Suppression Play: How Stemilt Tried to Lock Away Its Own Workers’ Evidence

The Misconduct The protective order fight was not a legal technicality. It was a power play. Stemilt pushed hard for what it called a “universal protective order” that would have locked down essentially all information gathered during discovery. The company specifically argued that Columbia Legal Services “intended to use the materials outside of this litigation,” and it was not wrong about that. Columbia had already used Stemilt’s anonymized domestic payroll data in a separate lawsuit to argue for higher hourly wages in Washington State H-2A contracts.

In other words: Stemilt’s workers’ own lawyers used data from this case to help other farmworkers get paid more. Stemilt wanted that stopped. The company successfully convinced the district court to issue an order requiring Columbia to get a federal judge’s permission before using any discovery material in any other advocacy, legal work, or press outreach. The court warned it would grant that permission only “in limited circumstances.”

Columbia attorneys stated in sworn declarations that this order had a “tremendous chilling effect” on their advocacy across an entire portfolio of other cases and policy work. The organization had identified several documents it described as “highly relevant” to other matters, including information about abuses of farmworkers found in Washington State Employment Security Division records. Under the judge’s order, Columbia could not even bring those facts to state legislators or reporters without court approval.

The Judge Never Explained Why. That Was the Problem.

The Ninth Circuit’s ruling came down hard on the district court’s process, not just its outcome. Under federal civil procedure rules, a court must find “good cause,” backed by specific, particularized evidence of harm, before issuing a protective order restricting access to discovery materials. The district court’s order contained only a brief explanation and zero finding of good cause. No specific harm to Stemilt was identified. No balancing of public and private interests was performed. The order simply said: ask permission first.

The appeals court called this an abuse of discretion. Federal law is clear that discovery is presumptively public, and that allowing evidence from one case to be used in others advances judicial economy by avoiding wasteful duplication. Stemilt’s lawyers never demonstrated specific prejudice for each particular document. They offered, as the court’s own precedents put it, nothing but “broad allegations of harm, unsubstantiated by specific examples or articulated reasoning.”

The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Workers Actually Lived Through

The Misconduct The lawsuit at the center of this case alleged forced labor and human trafficking. Those are federal crimes. They are also words that get sanitized quickly in legal filings into passive phrases and procedural arguments, which is exactly how a corporation prefers it. Ten human beings came to the United States under the federal H-2A agricultural guest worker program, believing they would find work, earn wages, and return home. What they allegedly found instead was a company willing to exploit the structural trap built into their visa status to keep them working.

The H-2A visa program is designed, by architecture, to maximize employer power. A worker’s legal right to be in the United States is tied entirely to their employer’s sponsorship. Leave the job, or get fired, and the visa evaporates. This is not a coincidence of policy design. It is a feature that agricultural corporations have lobbied to preserve because it produces a workforce with almost no leverage. When Stemilt is your employer and Stemilt controls whether you stay in the country, “forced” is not a dramatic word. It is a legal description of the choices available to you.

The workers who brought this case are named in the court record, not as abstract plaintiffs but as people: Margarito, Fernando, Jose, Sandro, Victor, Jose, Fernando, Jose, Hector, Bismark. They hired lawyers, filed federal suits, survived a protracted and contentious discovery process that even the judge described as “quite litigious,” and ultimately settled. The terms of that settlement are not public. We do not know what they received. What we do know is that Stemilt’s legal team spent enormous resources attempting to ensure that whatever these workers’ lawyers learned about the company’s practices would never leave that courtroom.

Consider what that suppression order would have meant in practice. Columbia Legal Services stated it had found information in Washington State Employment Security Division records about “abuses of farmworkers” and “shortcomings in the H-2A system that are outside of the lawsuit.” Under the district court’s order, Columbia could not take that information to a state legislator, could not share it with a reporter, could not use it in another case without first asking a federal judge for permission. Stemilt would have used the court system, the very system these workers appealed to for justice, as a tool to prevent that information from ever improving conditions for any other farmworker. The Ninth Circuit stopped it. But the attempt tells you everything about how this company valued accountability versus confidentiality.

Legal Receipts: Their Own Words, on the Record

The Facts These are direct quotations from the Ninth Circuit’s opinion and the court record. Nothing is paraphrased.

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Pays When a Corporation Buries Evidence

The Cost of a Life: What the System Values vs. What It Pays

What Now? Who Is Watching, and What You Can Do

The Players Still on the Field

The underlying class action has settled and been dismissed. The suppression order has been vacated. But Stemilt AG Services still operates. Its parent company still employs H-2A workers. The same corporate structure that generated the forced labor and trafficking allegations is still harvesting Washington State fruit. The court case is over. The conditions that produced it are not.

Regulatory Bodies That Should Be Paying Attention

• U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division: Enforces H-2A wage requirements and labor standards. Every H-2A employer’s compliance record is a matter of federal oversight.
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security / ICE: Responsible for human trafficking enforcement, including labor trafficking under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
• Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I): State-level enforcement of workplace safety and wage laws for agricultural workers.
• Washington State Employment Security Division (ESD): The agency whose records were at the center of this suppression fight; holds data on employer compliance and worker treatment in the state.
• Columbia Legal Services: The organization that fought this suppression order and won. They now have the legal right to use this evidence in future advocacy. Support them directly.

Named Corporate Role to Watch

Stemilt AG Services, LLC is the direct defendant. It is listed in court documents as a subsidiary of a larger fruit-growing operation in Washington State. The [REDACTED – Not in Source] parent company’s leadership, as executives of a company twice named in forced labor and trafficking allegations, bear direct accountability for the conditions that produced ten federal plaintiffs.

Get Off the Sidelines

The workers in this case needed lawyers who could fight for years in federal court. Most exploited workers never find those lawyers. Organizations like Columbia Legal Services, the ACLU of Washington, and Familias Unidas por la Justicia (all of whom filed amicus briefs in this case supporting the workers’ lawyers) are doing that work right now with limited resources. Donate, volunteer, or amplify their work. At the local level, support farmworker-led organizations in Washington State and wherever you live. Buy from producers with verified fair labor certifications when you can, and pressure grocery retailers to audit their supply chains. The apple in your grocery bag has a human history. Demand that it be a clean one.