In 2015, a Robeson County, North Carolina, poultry farmer filed a federal whistleblower complaint alleging that Perdue Farms retaliated against him after he publicly said Perdue sent him sick birds that the company refused to help treat.
Some were deformed, he said. Others were forced to grow so fast that the tired and heavy birds spent most of their time lying in their litter, which caused feathers to drop off. Some died of apparent illnesses just a few days after arriving at his farm, Craig Watts alleged in a whistleblower complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Nearly a decade later, Perdue, one of the country’s largest poultry producers, is suing Watts and the DOL. The lawsuit, filed last week in federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, challenges the constitutionality of Watts’ case.
Over the years, the case was dismissed by an administrative law judge but brought back to life by courtroom fights.
“It’s much bigger than Craig versus Perdue,” said Watts of his battle with Perdue. “It’s all Davids versus all Goliaths. And I love the way that story ends, I’ll tell you that.”
If Perdue’s case is successful, it could put an end to whistleblower protections under several national laws, said Dana Gold, director of the Democracy Protection Initiative at the Government Accountability Project. The Washington, D.C.-based organization defends federal whistleblowers, including Watts.
“This is the core of why this lawsuit is potentially seismic,” Gold said. “We know whistleblowers are essentially protecting us. We care about planes not falling from the sky. We care about not having a nuclear disaster. We care about not having toxic contamination. And we know employees are in the best position to create compliance with these laws.”
Federal statutes not only protect whistleblowers from retaliation, Gold said, but also deter companies from doing wrong.
Since 2018, employees have filed between 2,500 and 3,500 federal whistleblower cases annually, DOL records show.
Of the 3,600 DOL cases that judges heard last year, 891, or about a quarter, had a positive outcome for the person who filed the case, according to DOL.
Perdue’s lawsuit seeks to stop Watts’ case from moving forward again.
It alleges that a trial before an administrative law judge violates the company’s rights to a jury trial. And it argues that Watts had a contractual relationship with Perdue and therefore the case must be held outside an administrative court.
“Perdue is not asking this court to litigate the merits of Watts’ accusations,” the lawsuit reads. “Instead, Perdue brings five constitutional challenges to the administrative proceedings.”
A battle with a long history
To document the health of his chickens, Watts invited members of the animal rights group Compassion in World Farming to his farm in southeastern North Carolina in May 2014. They took pictures and videos of the poor conditions, conditions that Watts said were the result of Perdue’s failure to care for the birds and the company’s desire to overcrowd his barns.
Poultry farmers like Watts are often contract workers. Companies, in this case Perdue, provide the birds, feed and tell the farmers how the chickens must be raised.
The Charlotte Observer wrote about his case in a 2022 series that investigated poultry farming in North Carolina. The series looked at the secrecy behind the industry and how the industry effects farmers, neighbors and the environment.
In his complaint, Watts said the footage taken by CIWF showed that Perdue’s chickens were not “raised humanely,” as the company likes to tout. Watts’ hoped that the “video’s publication would prompt a significant investigation or other action by state and federal government officials,” his complaint reads.
In December 2014, the New York Times wrote about the condition of chickens raised on Watts’ farm. The Times published some of the video taken by the animal rights group.
The video showed overcrowded chicken houses, with some birds dead, ill or with deformities, Watts’ complaint says.
The day after the New York Times story, two Perdue inspectors visited Watts’ farm. Inspections continued almost daily until the flock was grown and removed later in December, Watt alleged in his whistleblower complaint.
Later that month, Perdue told Watts in a letter it would audit his chicken houses and require him to be “retrained on biosecurity and poultry welfare” before the company sends another flock of chickens to raise. It would also perform frequent, unannounced checks of his farm, the letter said.
“It just seemed like it never ended,” Watts told the Observer. “I was a model grower. Now all of a sudden I was a bad apple.”
As a result, Watts said, he had to wait nine extra days for a new flock, which cost him about $4,500. In his whistleblower complaint Watts contended that it was all retaliation. He quit the business about a year later.
“The daily assault on complainant’s mental and physical health ultimately required him to withdraw from his contract with Perdue on January 26, 2016,” the whistleblower complaint says.
Perdue denied that it retaliated against Watts. In its response to Watts’ complaint, Perdue alleged that the farmer tried to defame the company by not caring for his flock and then letting the animal rights group film it.
Attorneys for Perdue did not respond to emails or voice messages from The Observer on Friday and Monday.
Need for whistleblower protections
Perdue’s challenge to Watts’ whistleblower lawsuit stems from a ruling the U.S. Supreme Court made this year. The ruling held that some U.S. Security Exchange Commission administrative proceedings violated the defendant’s 7th Amendment rights to a jury trial.
In that case — SEC v. Jarkesy — the court ruled that when the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the defendant has a right to a jury trial.
In the complaint filed last week, Perdue echoed the Supreme Court’s decision, saying that restricting the case to a administrative law judge, rather than a federal jury trial, is unconstitutional.
But it’s vital that whistleblowers have access to administrative proceedings, Gold said. Filing an administrative whistleblower complaint with the DOL is easier and less costly for concerned employees than filing a lawsuit through the federal courts, she said.
She said the administrative proceeding system has helped keep whistleblowers safe for years. And if Perdue’s lawsuit is successful, those protections could collapse, Gold said.
“It gives employees a fighting chance when they are speaking up to an entity with enormous resources and enormous fighting power,” Gold said. “These legal protections offer a degree of insulation.”
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