The Department of Justice on June 14 asked a Wisconsin federal judge for more space for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux to respond to the court’s nationwide restraining order against the loan debt relief program for minority farmers and motions from the conservative group representing white farmers excluded from the debt-relief plan.
USDA must respond to the motion for a preliminary injunction filed by a conservative legal group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) on behalf of 12 white farmers and ranchers who sued USDA, Vilsack and Ducheneaux over the debt relief.
U.S. District Judge William Griesbach issued a temporary restraining order June 10 that effectively halted USDA from paying the $4 billion in debt relief to socially disadvantaged farmers while the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin considered a more extensive preliminary injunction request. USDA is facing similar lawsuits in Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Wyoming, and two cases in separate Texas federal courts.
DOJ attorneys representing USDA wrote in a brief Monday to Griesbach that the federal government would need more than 30 pages to explain their case as to why the loan repayment program for socially disadvantaged farmers is legal.
The brief noted that the plaintiffs’ claims over equal protection under the law require the federal government to show “that the effects of discrimination against minority farmers in USDA programs persist,” such that the loan repayment program was necessary. That will require the government to document “the numerous investigations, reports, articles, and congressional testimony over decades that have documented the discrimination against minority farmers in USDA programs and thus demonstrate that the government had a strong basis in evidence to conclude that the debt relief to socially disadvantaged farmer and ranchers (in the American Relief Plan) was necessary to serve its compelling interests.”
With that, the government attorneys asked for up to 40 pages to file an effective response to the motion for a preliminary injunction.
The debt relief program was part of the American Relief Plan passed earlier this year. The provision granted USDA $4 billion to pay off loans for socially disadvantaged farmers—under a 1990 definition created by Congress that includes farmers who are African American, Latino or Hispanic, American Indian, or Alaskan Native, Asian American, or Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders. Caucasian women, who are eligible to apply for loans as socially disadvantaged since 1992, are not included in the debt relief. — Chris Clayton, DTN ag policy editor
