Black farmers’ challenge USDA payments in federal appeals court

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals last week in Cincinnati heard arguments from heirs of Black farmers across the country who have been prevented for more than a century in applying to for U. S. Department of Agriculture low-interest loans and grants meant to assist farmers, including Black farmers.

While the heirs of White farmers and farmers from other minorities have been able to receive loans from the USDA, heirs of Black farmers have been discriminated against. Black farmers are denied USDA loans more than any other group, according to CNN data.

Under former President Joe Biden, the agency launched the Discrimination of Financial Assistance Program to provide monetary help to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who were discriminated against prior to 2021. However, the USDA insists that only people still alive can apply for the program.

The Biden administration sent out millions of dollars in relief checks in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $500,000 amounting to a total of $2.2 billion to over 43,000 Black farmers in an effort to address inequity in farm loan programs, before an emergency request at a federal court to temporarily pause the process.

Thomas Burrell, president of the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association headquartered in the Memphis, Tennessee, area, said discriminatory practices denied farmers’ heirs generational wealth.

Burrell, speaking Jan. 30 outside the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse in downtown Cincinnati, said, “What is the purpose of saying, we’re going to go back and cover discrimination that happened 20, 30, 40 years ago but not pay the heirs?” Burrell said.

Percy Squire, a Columbus-based attorney representing the farmers, said there were Black farmers who were discriminated against, who had to sell their farms in order to survive, and those people’s estates should be eligible for financial assistance, because their heirs would have benefited from that. They wouldn’t even accept the applications from Black farmers’ heirs, he said.

The government’s attorney, Jack Starcher, argued to the appellate court’s three-judge panel that the program applications were only open to “living farmers.”

Squire said the assistance would go to the dead farmers’ heirs, but he said assisting still-living-yet-elderly applicants would also benefit heirs.

The Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, which Burrell says has over 20,000 members, lost at a federal district court, with the case moving to the three-judge panel at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, which also handles cases from Tennessee,  to pause the relief payment process and reconsider the lawsuit – before the program runs out of money, Burrell said.

“We were asking the Department of Agriculture discontinue its attack of discrimination against the African American community, particularly African American farming and ranching community and their subsequent heirs,” Burrell said.

One argument the farmers’ association is using is from a new Supreme Court decision that overturned a 45-year-old precedent governing how federal courts interpret executive agency actions.

In June, the Supreme Court ended a legal doctrine known as “Chevron” – named after a 1984 case – that instructed courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a law when the statutory language is ambiguous. The high court’s majority opinion said that judges should exercise “independent judgment” in assessing whether an agency regulation complies with the relevant statute.

As a result, the farmers’ association says the trial judge incorrectly relied on a “discredited” standard of review and that the appeals court should examine what the USDA is doing. The panel isn’t expected to render a decision for months. If it sides with the Black farmers, the program will have to reopen applications, which closed last January.

There is also concern among some Black farmers that if the court were to pause the payment program, it would harm the very people waiting for relief from the federal government.

John Boyd, Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, told CNN the inclusion of heirs is a “reparations issue that should be looked at by the courts,” but said he didn’t want the program blocked in the meantime.

“It’s good that the payments are going out to needy Black farmers and families. The law was clear on who was going to be eligible in that process for farmers,” Boyd told CNN. “It’s timely, but we still want our 120% debt relief.”

A spokesperson for the USDA said the department “has been working hard to dismantle systemic barriers to accessing loans” and is “assessing application trends, particularly of historically underserved customers.”

“Analysis of this data has helped inform changes that have been enacted such as an online loan application, a new loan assistance tool, a simplified application process, and more,” the spokesperson told CNN.

In 1981, Burrell ignited a movement with protests and sit-ins in his native home of Covington, Tennessee, to address issues and concerns of Black famers in the United States and abroad who were deliberately discriminated against by the U. S. Department of Agriculture

BFAA gained nationwide prominence after successfully launching a worldwide public and media awareness campaign in the historic (Pigford v. Glickman) 1999 class-action lawsuit against the USDA, alleging racial discrimination against Black farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1981 and 1996.  The lawsuit was settled on April 14, 1999, for almost $1 billion. 

Burrell was one of the first Black farmers to publicly engage in a civil war against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1981.  He gained overwhelming support from other Black farmers and staged weeks of protests, sit-ins and public rallies at a local USDA county office in his native home and other counties. The demonstrations sparked worldwide media attention and later evolved as the Black farmer’s class-action racial discrimination lawsuit in 1997; the lawsuits provided over $5 billion dollars in compensation to thousands of Black farmers and other minority farmers, including Native Americans, Hispanics, female farmers, and ranchers all over the country. 

For the last four decades, he has been fighting for the rights of Black farmers, their heirs, administrators who are still being discriminated against by the USDA.

The post Black farmers’ challenge USDA payments in federal appeals court appeared first on The Cincinnati Herald .