No tip, no victim, no named suspect - just a sweeping paperwork demand that fell apart
Indiana's top lawyer wanted employers' files on migrant workers. An appeals court just told him he needed a reason first.
In November 2024, the Indiana Attorney General sent a civil investigative demand - a legal order to turn over documents and answer questions - to Berry Global Group, an Evansville manufacturer. Three weeks later, a similar order went to the Haitian Center of Evansville, a nonprofit that serves the city's Haitian community.
The demands said the attorney general was looking into "human labor trafficking and indecent nuisances." Berry Global's order sought dozens of records tied to its hiring and employment of "Migrant" workers. Neither demand named a suspect, a victim, or a specific incident. Both organizations refused to comply.
Here is the part that matters for anyone running an HR function: neither Berry Global nor the Haitian Center was accused of trafficking. The attorney general's theory, as the court described it, was that migrants arriving in Evansville "are often uniquely vulnerable to exploitation," and that a large employer recruiting them might hold useful information.
The attorney general petitioned to enforce the demands. He lost. On July 27, 2026, the Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed that loss.
The court's reasoning was blunt. A civil investigative demand is valid only if there is a real investigation behind it - and an investigation needs "a factual predicate," something concrete like a tip or a complaint. The attorney general had none. At oral argument, his own counsel conceded, "We have not identified, and we're not prepared to identify, a specific suspect."
Without something to investigate, the court said, "there can be no investigation" - and with no investigation, no authority to issue the demands. That threshold, the court noted, guards citizens against "fishing expeditions."
For employers, the practical signal is clear. Recruiting refugees or migrant workers, or working with resettlement nonprofits, is not on its own a reason to suspect wrongdoing. A company cannot be picked first and investigated later in the hope that something surfaces.
Business groups lined up behind that view. The National Association of Manufacturers, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, and others filed briefs warning of the burden such demands would place on Indiana employers. Civil-liberties and immigrant-advocacy groups, including the ACLU of Indiana and the National Immigrant Justice Center, filed on the same side.
For HR leaders, the takeaway is concrete. A state agency must show a real, particularized reason before it can comb through hiring and employment records - and simply employing migrant workers does not supply that reason.
