An Eastern Washington apple and wine grape farm will pay $180,000 to settle allegations it discriminated against domestic workers and replaced them with foreign workers.

King Fuji Ranch, which has orchards and vineyards in Mattawa and Othello, required domestic applicants to have three months experience pruning and harvesting fruit. The farm did not have the same requirement for workers from Mexico or Central America, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.

“Employers cannot discriminate against willing, available local workers in order to abuse foreign visa programs,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement April 22.

King Fuji grows grapes for Tagaris Winery in Richland. The farm and winery are owned by Michael Taggares. Efforts to obtain comment from the company were unsuccessful.

Tipped off by Columbia Legal Services, the attorney general’s office demanded employment records from King Fuji in 2019. The company sought to block the probe, claiming the state was overstepping its authority by investigating whether the farm violated federal immigration law.

It wasn’t until 2022 that the Court of Appeals Division III published an opinion ruling that the investigation could go forward. The court agreed with the attorney general’s office that the focus of the investigation was whether the company violated state law by discriminating against domestic workers.

According to the investigation, King Fuji began hiring foreign workers in 2016 and told a labor recruiter to hire males under the age of 35, preferably with family ties that prevented them from staying in the U.S. after their contract expired, but did not instruct the recruiter to require three months experience.

From 2016 to 2019, the farm gradually terminated, failed to hire or replaced approximately 85% of its domestic workforce, the attorney general’s office alleged. The farm had approximately 230 women on its hiring list in 2015, but employed only about 17 women in 2019, the office claimed.

The farm gradually increased the number of male foreign workers it hired, from 85 in 2016 to 282 in 2019, according to the attorney general’s office.

The attorney general’s office claimed King Fuji discriminated against workers based on their country of origin and sex.

Federal law prohibits farms from supplanting domestic workers with foreign workers admitted to the U.S. with an H-2A visa.

“Growers who use the H-2A program are required to show a real labor shortage before they can bring in foreign workers,” Columbia Legal Services attorney Andrea Schmitt said in a statement.

Besides the fine, King Fuji agreed to adopt and distribute to employees an anti-discrimination policy and to put supervisors through annual anti-discrimination training for the next five years.

Assistant Attorneys General Patricio Marquez, Teri Healy and Matt Geyman, investigators Alma Poletti and Rebecca Pawul, and paralegal Anna Alfonso handled the case for the state. The attorney general’s office will deposit the $180,000 in a fund to use as it wishes, according to the settlement.