Poultry Manufacturer Perdue Seeks To Dismantle Tribunals For Whistleblower Complaints

Emboldened by a recent US Supreme Court decision, Perdue Farms contends the Labor Department's whistleblower review process is unconstitutional.

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Poultry manufacturer Perdue Farms Inc. sued the United States Labor Department and whistleblower Craig Watts, who has pursued litigation through the department’s administrative process for nearly a decade. The corporation now maintains that this administrative process is unconstitutional.

“Their suit could demolish whistleblower protections across issues [including] food safety, railroad and aviation safety, shareholder fraud, and environmental protection,” warned the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which represents Watts, a former Perdue chicken grower.

Administrative proceedings in Watts’ case were previously scheduled to begin on April 14, 2025.

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its regulatory authority to penalize securities fraud. The court held that the SEC’s in-house tribunal violated the Seventh Amendment “right to a trial by jury.”  

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion against the majority, which she said upended “longstanding precedent” by asserting that Congress may not assign “public-rights matters” to agencies for review without coming to the judicial branch.

“[Congress] has enacted more than 200 statutes authorizing dozens of agencies to impose civil penalties for violations of statutory obligations,” Sotomayor recalled. “Congress had no reason to anticipate the chaos today’s majority would unleash after all these years.”

Perdue seized upon the decision by the Supreme Court (known as Jarkesy) and submitted a counter-lawsuit on August 23 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Read the full article at The Dissenter