A Texas federal court issued a preliminary nationwide injunction halting the Biden Administration from awarding disaster relief based on race and sex following a lawsuit brought by Southeastern Legal Foundation and Mountain States Legal Foundation on behalf of Texas farmers.
In USDA’s 2022 Emergency Relief Program, the ag department implemented a progressive payment factor that capped aid payments for producers who suffered losses from drought and other natural disasters. USDA drew heavy criticism from ag groups and lawmakers. A letter from 66 Republican members of congress noted that, “”The current program does not provide needed assistance to full-time farm families that suffered the deepest losses, and in short, it misallocates limited but badly needed assistance.”
USDA countered that Congress gave the department $3.74 billion to deal with a $10 billion or larger problem. USDA officials also point out that out of more than 210,000 applications for ERP 2022, roughly 172,000 farmers received more payments than they would have received otherwise.
In the 2022 ERP program many farmers with a base-calculated payment over $10,000, saw the aid they received reduced by 90%. Once the progressive factoring was applied, if and only if farmers qualified as an underserved producer, FSA reimbursed them for premiums and fees paid in 2022.
An underserved farmer is defined as a beginning farmer or rancher, limited resource farmer or rancher, socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher, or veteran farmer or rancher. Socially disadvantaged farmers include American Indians or Alaskan Natives, Asians or Asian-Americans, Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics or Hispanic Americans, Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders and women.
Limited resource is defined as a farmer or rancher who is both: 1) a person whose direct or indirect gross farm sales did not exceed $189,200 in each of 2019 and 2020 calendar years and 2) a person whose total household income was at or below the national poverty level for a family of four during the same years.
In the lawsuit, Plaintiffs Rusty Strickland, Alan West, and Bryan Baker—all white men who were not “socially disadvantaged” or “underserved” —received less money in disaster relief funds than if they had been of a different race or sex.
The court held that the program runs afoul of the constitutional guarantee of equality because it discriminates on the basis of race and sex. It granted Plaintiffs’ request to halt the Biden Administration from continuing the program unless and until it stops this discrimination.
The judge ruled that the government lacked the proper justification to conduct a race conscious program and that the program was not properly tailored to meet its goals of remediating past discrimination. The court said a progressive payment system can be used in future assistance programs if it is not based on race or sex.
Southeastern Legal Foundation states, “This is a major win for freedom and equality in our nation. Every executive agency under the Biden Administration has adopted so-called equity, which is not the same as equality because it promotes socially engineered outcomes instead of equal opportunity. We are pleased that the court agrees and sees through the USDA’s unconstitutional scheme, and we are proud to stand beside America’s farmers in holding their government accountable.”
Mountain States Legal Foundation states, “Discrimination has no place in federal spending. MSLF and SLF have stopped the Biden Administration from implementing their racist spending programs before, but the government apparently failed to learn the lesson. This latest injunction halting discriminatory disaster relief will be a fresh reminder that we are all created equal, and that the Constitution guarantees Americans the equal protection of the laws.”
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SLF/Northern Ag Network
