## Facts

- Four Hillsborough County, Florida farming operations—Frank Diehl Farms, Diehl & Lee, MLC, Villemaire Farms, Inc., and V.V. Vogel & Sons Farms, Inc.—employed seasonal migrant farmworkers during harvest seasons.
- Each farm made temporary housing available to some workers on a voluntary basis at little or no cost (trailers, barracks, houses, or similar camp facilities).
- The workers were not required, explicitly or implicitly, to live in the farm-provided housing to obtain or keep their jobs.
- The farms did not depend on the housing arrangement to maintain an adequate labor supply; the housing was not always filled to capacity even at peak harvest.
- A worker who lived in a camp had to work for the farm providing the housing when work was available; at other times, the worker could remain in the housing while working for other employers.
- Under § 6(a) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), the Secretary of Labor had adopted an ANSI consensus standard (ANSI Z4.4-1968) as a federal standard for temporary labor camps; the ANSI standard’s scope language was not included in the Secretary’s adoption.
- OSHA inspected the farms’ housing and issued citations alleging violations of the temporary labor camp standards.
- An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) treated the housing as a “workplace” because it was “directly related to employment,” upheld the citations, and assessed penalties.
- The Commission did not grant discretionary review, so the ALJ decision became the final order of OSHRC.
- The farms petitioned the Eleventh Circuit for review, arguing the camps were outside OSHA’s jurisdiction because living there was not a condition of employment.

## Issues

1. Whether voluntary employer-provided housing for seasonal farmworkers is a “workplace” or “place of employment” subject to regulation under the OSH Act when workers are not required to live there as a condition of employment.
2. Whether the Secretary of Labor’s broader “directly related to employment” approach to jurisdiction over housing warranted judicial acceptance given the agency’s prior practice focusing on housing required by the job.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit granted the petition for review and set aside the Commission’s order upholding OSHA citations for the housing facilities.
- The court held that employer-provided housing is not subject to OSHA regulation under the OSH Act when residing there is voluntary and not a condition of employment.
- The court rejected the Secretary’s effort to treat the camps as a regulated “workplace” merely because they had a connection to the employment relationship.
- The court declined to accept the agency’s expanded interpretation where it marked a shift from earlier enforcement practice and lacked sufficient support in the statute’s language and history.

## Legal Principles

- “Workplace” under the OSH Act refers to the location where work is performed; it does not reach every site associated with an employer-employee relationship.
- Employer-provided housing may fall within OSHA’s reach when living in that housing is effectively required by the job (a condition of employment), but optional housing generally falls outside the statutory term “workplace.”
- A court may give reduced weight to an agency interpretation that represents a significant change from prior practice and is not supported by statutory text or legislative history.
- OSHA’s jurisdiction is not a general license to regulate off-duty living conditions simply because the housing arrangement is beneficial to the employer or related to employment.

## Conclusion

In *Frank Diehl Farms v. Secretary of Labor*, the Eleventh Circuit held that OSHA lacked authority under the OSH Act to regulate temporary housing offered voluntarily to seasonal migrant farmworkers where the workers were free to live elsewhere and the housing was not a condition of employment, rejecting the Secretary’s attempt to treat such camps as a “workplace” based only on their relationship to employment.


Frank Diehl Farms v. Secretary of Labor, 696 F.2d 1325 (1983)