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Try as they might, most other state and federal regulatory agencies can’t keep up with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The EEOC can best be compared to a legal pit bull — once it latches on to an employer, it won’t let go.

A couple of years ago, one of the top lawyers for the EEOC spoke to the annual Wafla Labor Conference.

“A common thread in egregious cases is total neglect. Out of sight and out of mind. In one of our cases an employer on the witness stand said, ‘We don’t have policies. These are just farmworkers. Oh, I mean we’re just a family farm,’” William Tamayo, the EEOC’s Northwest regional attorney, told the group.

We will stipulate that employees should be able to do their jobs without harassment. We will also stipulate that when something happens the EEOC should do its job.

What we won’t stipulate to is how the EEOC has, in at least one case, pursued farmers over nearly a decade until they were forced to pay a huge fine. In the words of their lawyer, the settlement was just to “stop the bleed.”

In 2010, EEOC accused H-2A contractor Global Horizons of violating human trafficking laws. The criminal charges were abandoned, but the next year the EEOC sued the contractor and two farms, Green Acre Farms and Valley Fruit Orchards, seeking $30 million in damages.

In 2014, a federal judge dismissed the case against the farms because of a lack of evidence of a hostile work environment, retaliation and discrimination.

Global Horizons accepted a $7.7 million default order and was dropped from the case.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the case against the two farms on appeal but a federal judge dismissed the case a second time and said the EEOC needed to pay the farms’ attorney fees.

But that’s not all. The EEOC appealed to the 9th Circuit again.

You can see where this was going — a prolonged and expensive legal battle against a federal agency that has deep pockets and, apparently, all the time in the world.

That’s when the farms decided to get off the merry-go-round. They agreed to a $325,000 fine to settle the accusations, even though one of the previous judges had ruled that EEOC “failed to conduct an adequate investigation” and the allegations were “baseless, unreasonable and frivolous.”

The farms’ lawyer, Beth Joffe, said EEOC “remained committed to appealing and carrying this on.” But for the farms, it was “efficient and economical” to settle the lawsuit after nine years.

She said that as part of the settlement the farms had agreed to implement recruitment practices, training programs and other policies, which they have already been doing “for many years.”

The fine will be split among 105 Thai former guestworkers. Valley Fruit Orchards has ceased agricultural operations.

And EEOC has validated its reputation.