It isn’t just forfeiture law that can give the government this intimidating type of power. Under a provision of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, the U.S. Department of Labor can seek what is known as a “hot goods” order, freezing the physical output of an employer that it suspects of having violated wage and hour law, all without having to prove its case at a trial.
In recent years — urged by such constituencies as labor unions, trial lawyers, and left-leaning academics — the Obama administration has greatly stepped up its enforcement of FLSA wage-hour law. Part of that enforcement has taken the form of a revitalized use of hot-goods orders, which even defenders of its approach concede had until recently been little-known. So far the most notable result has been a federal attack on blueberry growers in the Pacific Northwest — an onslaught high-handed enough to have been met with a stinging rebuke from a federal court last year, and which has now ended in humiliation with the dropping of charges against two growers and a refund of moneys extracted from them.