Cases

We bring lawsuits in collaboration and alignment with allies across movement sectors to dismantle corporate consolidation of power in the meat industry. Our cases seek to hold bad actors accountable, and empower those harmed by Big Ag, from meatpacking workers put at risk of contracting COVID-19 by their employers, to environmental justice communities subjected to land, air, and water contamination from factory-sized operations.

Search below to see briefs and other legal documents filed by Public Justice in Food Project cases:

May 18, 2023Workers’ Rights,

Proposition 12

Public Justice submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of California’s Proposition 12, which limits the sale of pork products in California produced using extreme confinement. The Supreme Court of the United...
May 9, 2023Clean Water,

Snake River Waterkeeper v. Simplot

Snake River Waterkeeper is using the Clean Water Act to hold agribusiness company Simplot accountable to the people of Idaho for dirtying the Snake River with factory farm pollution. Simplot’s Grand View Feedlot is one...
January 17, 2023

Essential Services for Colorado’s Farmworkers

Everyone should be able to work with dignity and access resources that better their working conditions and lives. However, Colorado farmworkers’ right to access essential services where they work and live was under threat. The...
November 15, 2022Transparency,

Deep Dive: Hormel

Hormel wants you to make the “Natural Choice.” Documents we’ve made public reveal how that is anything but.
October 27, 2021Workers’ Rights,

Ag-Gag Litigation

A just, healthy, and thriving food system requires transparency. Public Justice engages in litigation to strike down the Ag-Gag laws that penalize whistleblowers who expose the truth about the factory farm system.
August 24, 2021Civil Rights,

­Debt Relief for Farmers of Color

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 promised $4 billion in debt relief for farmers and ranchers of color to mitigate the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on a population previously excluded from government resources...
June 21, 2021Workers’ Rights,

Food & Water Watch v. Smithfield Foods

Food & Water Watch, represented by Public Justice, filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against Smithfield Foods, alleging that the multinational meat processing company repeatedly lied to consumers throughout the...
April 14, 2021Workers’ Rights,

Buljic v. Tyson Foods, Inc.

Public Justice filed an amicus brief in support of meatpacking workers who died from contracting COVID-19 at a Tyson slaughterhouse in Waterloo, Iowa (Buljic v. Tyson Foods, Inc. and Fernandez v. Tyson Foods, Inc.). The two wrongful...
April 1, 2021Human/Community Health,

Sierra Club v. Walnutdale

Everybody has the right to clean water. Yet for the neighbors of industrial agriculture operations like Walnutdale Farms in Michigan, this right is unrealized. That is why the Public Justice Food Project represented the Sierra...
December 8, 2020Human/Community Health,

McKiver v. Murphy-Brown

Hundreds of mostly Black and brown community members in Eastern North Carolina won a series of mass action lawsuits against Smithfield for the public nuisance caused by factory hog farms. It was a historic victory....
November 30, 2020Workers’ Rights,

Maid-Rite (Justice at Work v. Sec. of Labor)

Public Justice, Towards Justice, Nichols Kaster, and Justice at Work filed a lawsuit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania using a never-before-tested mechanism in the Occupational Safety and Health Act, seeking to compel OSHA to enforce...
June 26, 2020Transparency,

Arkansas Ag-Gag

Arkansas’ Ag-Gag statute is modeled after the North Carolina statute, but it makes a few tweaks to try to protect it from being overturned as unconstitutional. The Arkansas Ag-Gag law provides an employer liquidated damages...
November 20, 2019Civil Rights,

Iowa Ag-Gag II (ALDF v. Reynolds)

Iowa’s second effort to prevent journalists or activists from entering livestock facilities under false pretenses to report on animal abuse was passed and signed into law just two months after U.S. District Judge James Gritzner...
November 19, 2019Civil Rights,

Iowa Ag-Gag I (ALDF v. Reynolds)

Public Justice serves as co-counsel in a challenge to Iowa’s first Ag-Gag law, which criminalizes undercover investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses. This statute made it a crime to gain access to, or employment at,...
November 12, 2019Transparency,

Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Hormel

Public Justice, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Richman Law Group filed a joint lawsuit in the District of Columbia Superior Court against Hormel Foods, alleging the company was misleading consumers through the advertising...
September 25, 2019Transparency,

Dakota Rural Action v. USDA

A coalition of groups representing family farmers, sustainable agriculture advocates and concerned citizens throughout the country filed suit against the United States Department of Agriculture. The suit aims to stop a USDA policy allowing industrial...
September 25, 2019Clean Water,

Center for Biological Diversity v. Swift Beef

Public Justice represented the Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch in a lawsuit against JBS-Swift Beef Company to stop illegal discharges of slaughterhouse pollution into Colorado’s South Platte River. The Lone Tree...
September 25, 2019Transparency,

Utah Ag-gag (Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Herbert)

In a victory for transparency in the food system, Public Justice successfully challenged a Utah statute that criminalized whistleblowing in the animal agricultural industry—in particular, slaughterhouses, meat processing plants, and factory farms. The law at...
September 25, 2019Transparency,

Beef Checkoff (R-CALF USA v. Perdue)

We are lead counsel on behalf of the nation’s largest organization of independent cattle producers, R-CALF USA, in a suit raising a First Amendment challenge to the administration of the Beef Checkoff program in Montana....
May 30, 2019Human/Community Health,

Indiana Right to Farm

Like many other states, Indiana has a “Right-to-Farm” statute, meant to codify the coming to the nuisance doctrine—so city-dwellers cannot move to rural lands and demand farms change their operations. Corporate agribusiness has, however, been...
May 30, 2019Transparency,

Western Watershed Project et al v. Peter Michael

This case is a federal constitutional challenge to two newly enacted Wyoming statutes (the “Data Laws”) that are designed to prevent the public from gathering “resource data” on public or private “open land” in the...
May 29, 2019Workers’ Rights,

Morris v. Tyson

The Public Justice Food Project represents a mass action of poultry growers in Western Kentucky who raise poultry for Tyson, the nation’s largest poultry company. Tyson acts as an “integrator,” controlling all of the inputs...
May 29, 2019Transparency,

North Carolina Ag-Gag

Public Justice is lead counsel on behalf of a coalition of public interest groups in a constitutional challenge to North Carolina’s “Anti-Sunshine” law—a statute that, like Ag-Gag laws, allows employers and property owners to sue...
May 29, 2019Transparency,

Idaho Ag-Gag

In recent years, more and more state legislatures have – at the urging of lobbyists representing factory farm operations and industrial food producers – taken up “Ag Gag” laws that shroud mega-farms in secrecy and...
May 29, 2019Clean Water,

Mountaire

“For years, I’ve been trying to figure out what was the cause of my son dying of an asthma attack. They’re saying it’s going to cost millions and millions and millions of dollars to fix...
May 29, 2019Human/Community Health,

Blackwood v. N&M Dairy

N&M Dairy was a multi-thousand cow dairy that the dumped millions of gallons of waste produced annually in surrounding open fields and earthen lagoons. The government and N&M Dairy consultants themselves warned N&M that its...
May 9, 2019Human/Community Health,

Fact Sheets

Find documents and resources produced by the Public Justice Food Project, as well as other organizations fighting for communities negatively impacted by industrial animal agriculture.
May 29, 2018Transparency,

Country-of-Origin Labeling (R-CALF USA v. USDA)

Public Justice served as lead counsel representing the nation’s largest organization of independent cattle producers, R-CALF USA, and the Cattle Producers of Washington, in a suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The suit alleged...
December 3, 2015Transparency,

Quesada v. Herb Thyme Farms

In this consumer class action, the plaintiffs alleged that Herb Thyme Farms, Inc. deliberately mixed organic herbs with non-organic herbs and sold them to the public as “100% organic.” Herb Thyme argued that the consumers’...
May 15, 2015Human/Community Health,

Yakima Valley Dairy Cases

In October 2012, the Center for Food Safety and the Community Association for Restoration of the Environment (CARE) warned four major Yakima Valley (Wash.) factory farms that they would take them to federal court unless the farms stopped contaminating local drinking water supplies with runoff from their dairy operations...
Skip to content