AG Brown sues Toppenish grower for discriminating against Washington farmworkers and women

SEATTLE – Attorney General Nick Brown today filed a civil rights lawsuit against Toppenish-based Cornerstone Ranches and its affiliates, alleging the hops and apple grower discriminated against local and female farmworkers by unlawfully terminating them and replacing them with foreign H-2A agricultural workers.

Cornerstone fired local workers after holding them to unfair productivity standards and other requirements not applied to H-2A workers, laid off local workers while H-2A employees continued to work, and regularly reduced local workers’ hours and schedules.

During the fall harvest season of 2021, local workers performed about 91% of farm labor hours at Cornerstone Ranches. By the same period two years later, their share of the work had shrunk to 59% of farm labor hours. Cornerstone more than doubled the number of H-2A workers that it hired from 2021 to 2023, all the while telling local workers that no work was available.

These actions dramatically reduced Cornerstone’s female workforce in violation of the Washington Law Against Discrimination. The average weekly hours worked by females in Cornerstone’s farm labor workforce dropped by 39%, when comparing June 2022 to April 2023 with the same period a year later. All of the H-2A agricultural workers that replaced them were male.

Additionally, the lawsuit says Cornerstone violated the Consumer Protection Act by, among other things, misleading local job seekers by telling them there was no work available and by failing to disclose the pay rate and hours of H-2A contract jobs to local workers, as required by law.

“The H-2A program was never intended to be a back-door source of labor when there are qualified workers here in Washington eager to take on the jobs, but that’s exactly how Cornerstone has used it,” Brown said. “The Attorney General’s Office is committed to fighting for the rights of local farmworkers and ensuring that employers follow the law.”

The federal H-2A program is meant to address temporary labor shortages by allowing employers to hire seasonal agricultural workers from other countries. To be eligible for the H-2A program, employers must certify that there is a shortage of U.S.-based workers who are willing, qualified, and able to work.

As part of the program, employers must offer local workers the same benefits, wages, guarantee of hours, and working conditions offered to foreign H-2A workers, which Cornerstone failed to do.

Cornerstone Ranches, Cornerstone Orchards, and Cornerstone Farm Management, collectively referred to as Cornerstone, produce more than 1 million pounds of hops and 30 million pounds of apples every year. Despite displacing the local workforce, the grower presents itself on its website and on social media as an independent farm that cares deeply about the Yakima Valley community and local workers, describing its employees as “family” and praising its “amazing team.” And after Cornerstone praised a specific local worker on its public Facebook account, it later fired that person while continuing to employ H-2A workers.

The Attorney General’s Office wants to hear from people who worked at Cornerstone since 2020. Contact the Civil Rights Division by emailing cornerstone@atg.wa.gov or by calling 1-833-660-4877 and selecting Option 6.

In the lawsuit, filed in Yakima County Superior Court, the state asks the court to declare that Cornerstone violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination and the Consumer Protection Act, permanently block the employer from continuing its unlawful practices, and provide relief for Washingtonians who were harmed.

Assistant Attorneys General Alyson Dimmitt Gnam and Alexia Diorio, Investigator Jennifer Sievert, and Paralegal Anna Alfonso are handling the case for Washington state.

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The Wing Luke Civil Rights Division works to protect the rights of all Washington residents by enforcing state and federal anti-discrimination laws. It is named for Wing Luke, who served as an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Washington in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He went on to become the first person of color elected to the Seattle City Council and the first Asian American elected to public office in the Pacific Northwest.

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