In a victory for farm worker unions, the California Supreme Court on Monday upheld a state law requiring employers in a farm labor dispute to accept the terms of a contract ordered by a state mediator after negotiations fail to produce an agreement.

The law, passed in 2002, was declared unconstitutional in 2015 by a state appeals court, which said it discriminated against growers and improperly allowed the state farm labor board, and its mediator, to impose binding contracts that had not been negotiated. But the state’s high court ruled unanimously that the law was a neutral measure designed to speed up the pace of farm labor collective bargaining in California.

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Monday’s ruling “creates the opportunity for new life” in the “moribund” farm labor law, said William Gould, a Stanford law professor and former chairman of both the state farm labor board and the National Labor Relations Board.