LOS ANGELES — A coalition of California agricultural groups and business employers has filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court challenging the state’s COVID-19 protocols.

Farm groups say the emergency temporary standards, or ETS, they are challenging in court are unnecessary and harmful.

The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board issued the standards on Nov. 30. Farmers say the standards create additional challenges for housing farmworkers, shift the burden of virus testing onto employers and impose impractical requirements. Experts say the standards also take away regulatory flexibility from Cal/OSHA, the state’s health and safety agency.

“They (the board) jammed this thing through around Thanksgiving and gave us little notice. We were scrambling to figure out what it was. Honestly, we’re still trying to figure out what all it does. But we know it hurts growers,” said Michael Miiller, director of government relations at the California Association of Winegrape Growers, one of the plaintiffs.

Other plaintiffs include the Western Growers Association, California Farm Bureau Federation, California Business Roundtable, Grower-Shipper Association of Central California and Ventura County Agricultural Association.

Bryan Little, director of employment policy for the Farm Bureau, said the board gave businesses scant time to comment.

In the lawsuit, farm groups allege the board lacks authority to impose many of the sweeping safety measures on employers.

In a statement Dec. 31, Dave Puglia, CEO and president of Western Growers, said employers had been following safety measures since March.

“The board imposed unrealistic, unfounded and economically harmful standards in total disregard of these realities. We have no choice but to seek judicial relief,” said Puglia.

In November, the standards created significant new obligations and liabilities for California farmers. The new standards required employers to provide expanded virus testing and additional paid time off, even if workers were exposed to COVID-19 outside the workplace.

The worst part, farm groups say, is ambiguous language about housing.

The standard requires that the housing employers provide to workers infected with COVID-19 must be cleaned daily. That rules out hotels, which can’t be cleaned while housing an infected person.

The standards also complicate how farm employers house H-2A guestworkers. The standards require further spacing between beds that would halve the number of people per unit.

Some growers also provide housing for long-term employees. According to ambiguous ETS language, any time visitors enter a farmworker’s family home, masks must be worn and furniture moved.

Rob Roy, president and general counsel at the Ventura County Agricultural Association, said the standards also impose transportation requirements that would cut by 50% the number of people who can ride in a vehicle and force employers to secure more buses.

The standards are effective through Oct. 1, 2021.

The board did not immediately respond to request for comment.

“This smacks of a political decision pushed by employee advocacy groups and organized labor,” said Roy. “But we’re hopeful that we’ll force the board to go back and redo the ETS according to due process, taking into account the affected individuals and businesses.”