West Marin farmworkers dealt setback in federal park lawsuit

A federal judge has rejected a petition for a restraining order to preserve farmworker housing in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Andrew Giacomini, a lawyer who lives in western Marin, sought the order as part of a lawsuit against the National Park Service. The suit aims to prevent the agency from denying lease extensions to dairies and ranches as a means of settling a lawsuit filed by three environmental groups.

U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney denied the petition during a hearing on Dec. 20, Giacomini said. However, the judge agreed to schedule a hearing on a preliminary injunction.

“It will probably happen in March,” Giacomini said. “She required the park service to commit that there will be no evictions of any of our clients until the preliminary injunction order has been heard.”

Giacomini suspects that the National Park Service is poised to announce a settlement in its litigation with the environmentalists. He says it would end agricultural operations inside federal park and terminate the workers’ jobs and housing.

“My belief is that the park service is rushing to get the settlement done before there’s a change in the administration,” Giacomini said, referring to the presidential transition. “I think you’re going to hear an announcement before the end of this year. Certainly, before Jan. 10.”

In 2022, the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project sued the National Park Service to prevent it from implementing an amendment to its general management plan that had been approved the prior year.

The new plan allowed the agency to issue 20-year agricultural leases to 24 ranches for continued operations. The leases permitted housing on 14 ranches while restricting occupancy to family members and workers.

The environmental groups sought to stop the National Park Service from approving the 20-year leases and instead require it to expand areas for elk herds. The Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association intervened in the suit.

Since then, the association, the National Park Service and the environmental groups have been engaging in closed-door negotiations. More recently, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy entered into confidentiality agreements with the parties to facilitate a settlement.

Giacomini’s latest legal filing says the agricultural workers have information that the federal agency has decided on agreements with the litigants to settle the environmentalists’ lawsuit.

“Agricultural workers are informed and believe that under the terms of the settlement, the Nature Conservancy will buy out the ranch leases and the ranchers will relinquish their leases and close down the ranches, including vacating worker housing,” the filing says.

Giacomini said he was informed that the Nature Conservancy board met last week to approve its contributions toward the settlements.

“I don’t know what those economic contributions are,” he said. “I just know it was on the docket for approval.”

Heather Gately, a spokesperson for the Nature Conservancy, declined to comment.

Melanie Gunn, a National Park Service official, said, it “does not comment on pending litigation.”

In October, Giacomini filed a motion in federal court to allow the more than 70 people living on the ranches and dairies in the park to intervene in the legal action as interested parties, just as the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association did.

Giacomini asked the court to allow his clients to use pseudonyms in place of their true names because some of them are undocumented.

The National Park Service and the environmental groups opposed the request, and the court ruled in their favor.

“It is inconceivable that the result of the public process can be overturned by a few special interests. But that is what is occurring,” Giacomini wrote in his recent filing. “And the National Park Service intends to ram this decision through its internal approval process without public participation or a revised Environmental Impact Statement. Absent this litigation, there would be no public process at all.”