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Federal Judge Marcia Morales Howard in Florida issued a preliminary injunction against President Joe Biden’s plan to offer loan forgiveness to black and other minority farmers but not to indebted white farmers, and said it is an attempt to address discrimination while practicing discrimination.

Farmers Only has two other ala carte features that are only available for Premium members: Gold Status: For an extra $9.99 a month, free users will be able to read & respond to your messages. Both free and Premium members will know you’re a Gold Status member because your messages will be highlighted in gold in their inbox, so it is a good. We are committed to delivering USDA services to America’s farmers and ranchers while taking safety measures in response to the pandemic. Some USDA offices are beginning to reopen to limited visitors by appointment only. Service Center staff also continue to work with agricultural producers via phone, email, and other digital tools. We are committed to delivering USDA programs and services to America’s farmers and ranchers while taking safety measures in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Some USDA offices are beginning to reopen to limited visitors by appointment only. Contact your local Service Center to find out if it is open to limited visitors. Try out FarmersOnly.com for farmers, ranchers and country folks. City folks just don't get it! The country's 45,000 Black farmers account for just 1.3% o f the 3.4 million U.S. Farmers overall. It's a dramatic drop from the 1 million Black farmers who existed a century ago.

Howard, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote in the decision:

The Constitution’s promise of equal justice under the law is that the government will treat people as individuals, not simply as members of their racial group. “In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American,” 515 U.S. 200, 239 (1995) (Scalia, J., concurring), and all Americans are entitled to equal treatment regardless of color. Plaintiff Scott Wynn brings this lawsuit to challenge a law that distributes benefits and burdens on the basis of race in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

The lawsuit was brought by Scott Wynn, who is being represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which tells his story on its website:

Scott Wynn is a lifelong farmer who has run Wynn Farms in Jennings, Florida, producing sweet potatoes, corn, and cattle since 2006. COVID-19, however, hit the family’s finances hard. Steep drops in beef prices and too little help and supplies to grow sweet potatoes meant less income, nearly all of which went toward federal farm loan repayment. A farm loan forgiveness provision is baked into the COVID-19-driven American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, but Scott is not eligible—because he is white. The law allows loan forgiveness of up to 120 percent but only for minority farmers and ranchers, who the law automatically treats as “socially disadvantaged,” regardless of their individual circumstances. Because government cannot use racial classifications to decide who gets government benefits and burdens, Scott is fighting back to restore his right to equal treatment for all farmers.

Biden’s plan is part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which set asideapproximately $4 billion for loan relief, but also for grants, training and education.

The Washington Post reported that the plan already faced a legal hurdle:

The program was already temporarily on hold, due to a separate restraining order in a case by a White farmer in Wisconsin. However, even if that Wisconsin order is reconsidered or even reversed in July, when a ruling is expected, this new nationwide injunction would still keep the program on hold for some time.

The Florida case is considered the first nationwide preliminary injunction, said lawyers for the group Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed the lawsuit in May.

“This program is discriminatory because it bases eligibility for loan forgiveness solely on the basis of being a member of a minority group, regardless of your circumstances,” Wen Fa, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation said Wednesday. “If you’re a white farmer, regardless of your circumstances, you are categorically ineligible.”

The Post noted Howard “also made clear that the Agriculture Department could continue to prepare to deliver the debt relief until the program is found to be ‘constitutionally permissible.’”

A Tampa Bay news website also covered the development:

In a court document opposing Wynn’s request for a preliminary injunction, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys said Congress passed the plan to provide aid to “socially disadvantaged farmers who it determined needed such relief due to decades of discrimination against them in U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on them and the failure of prior funding to reach them.”

“The Supreme Court has recognized that both of Congress’ interests in enacting (the section of law) — remedying prior discrimination against minority farmers in USDA programs and ensuring that its funding does not serve to perpetuate the effects of that discrimination — are compelling,” the Department of Justice attorneys wrote.

“Congress had strong evidence, including testimony and reports spanning decades and up to the enactment of (the section) documenting discrimination against minority farmers in USDA programs and its lingering effects, thereby necessitating the remedial action. … And Congress narrowly tailored its remedy by directing one-time payments to the groups it found to have suffered such discrimination, only after trying race-neutral alternatives for decades.”

But Judge Howard disagreed.

“Although the government argues that (the section) is narrowly tailored to reach small farmers or farmers on the brink of foreclosure, it is not,” she wrote. “Regardless of farm size, an SDFR (socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher) receives up to 120 percent debt relief. And regardless of whether an SDFR is having the most profitable year ever and not remotely in danger of foreclosure, that SDFR receives up to 120 percent debt relief. Yet a small white farmer who is on the brink of foreclosure can do nothing to qualify for debt relief. Race or ethnicity is the sole, inflexible factor that determines the availability of relief provided by the government.”

The case is Wynn v. Vilsack No. 3:21-cv-00514 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

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(Bloomberg) -- The nation’s shrinking pool of minority farmers is due to receive $5 billion of assistance in the Covid-19 relief bill, reflecting the Democrats’ focus on the lingering impact of racism and their battle to take control of the Senate.

At a time when much of Washington is fixated on the influence of moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the new debt relief program targeted specifically to Black, Hispanic and Native American farmers also shows the political weight of Raphael Warnock. The Black freshman senator’s runoff win in Georgia, along with that of fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff, tipped the Senate to Democratic control.

Raphael Warnock

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

“For too long, farmers of color have been left to fend for themselves, not getting the support they deserve from the USDA, making it even more difficult for them to recover from this pandemic,” Warnock, who was a driving force behind the provision, said on the Senate floor, referring to the Department of Agriculture.

The idea provoked unified opposition from Senate Republicans, with all 49 GOP members present supporting an unsuccessful attempt to strip out the aid. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania denounced the prospect of federal funds going to farmers of the “right race” as “unconstitutional” and “outrageous.”

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package, scheduled for a final vote in the House as soon as Tuesday, amounts to a dramatic reversal from the approach of former President Donald Trump’s administration to stimulating the economy, with spending heavily tilted toward poor and middle-class households that have taken the brunt of the economic downturn. It’s also a sharp contrast from Trump’s signature tax overhaul, which mostly benefited corporations and the wealthy.

The assistance for minority farmers, designed to counter a history of discrimination in Agriculture Department lending and aid, follows a presidential campaign shaped by Black Lives Matter protests touched off by George Floyd’s death in police custody and the disproportionate toll the pandemic has taken on African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans.

Biden owes his presidency to support from African-Americans in the Democratic primaries and his party control of the Senate in part because of the enthusiasm of Black voters in Georgia mobilized by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

That one of the Biden administration’s first legislative advances on racial equity is coming in agriculture -- a policy area typically dominated by farm state politicians who often represent overwhelmingly White constituencies -- shows how the political constellation on farm policy shifted this year.

Representative David Scott of Georgia became the first Black chair of the House Agriculture Committee. Representative Sanford Bishop Jr., also from Georgia, just began his second term leading the powerful Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, the first African-American to hold that post. Georgia has the fifth-largest population of Black farmers.

Read More: Scott to Make History as First Black House Farm Panel Chairman

Warnock and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey this year joined the Senate Agriculture Committee, only the second and third Black members ever to do so.

Up for re-election in 2022 because he filled a vacant seat, Warnock already can point to a tangible win for Black farmers in his home state of Georgia.

Warnock, who is the pastor of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church in Atlanta, said the pandemic “illuminated and exacerbated long-standing disparities” such as the discrimination against minority farmers.

Black farm ownership plunged over the past century amid a record of discrimination by USDA administrators in denying or slow-walking loans and aid to minority farmers and sometimes-violent intimidation by White supremacists seeking to drive African-Americans from the land as they sought voting and other civil rights.

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Many Black farmers also have been hindered by a system of ownership called “heirs’ property,” a vestige of the Jim Crow era in which a type of collective ownership was passed down, often to multiple relatives, without a will.

Multiple people sharing heirs’ property leaves farmers vulnerable to relative going to court to force a sale, said Thomas Mitchell, a law professor at Texas A&M University. For decades, courts have routinely obliged in heirs’ property cases, particularly in disadvantaged communities, he said. And many African Americans lacked the means or ability to hire lawyers -- or had a well-founded distrust of local courts.

Heirs’ property owners often don’t recognize how disfavored they are, Mitchell said, calling the system “the present-day manifestation of Jim Crow.”

A century ago, there were almost 1 million Black farmers in America, representing 14% of U.S. farmers. By 2017, the last agricultural census, the number had dwindled to about 45,500--1.3% of the total number of producers. Black-operated farms accounted for only 4.7 million acres of farmland, 0.5% of the total.

John Boyd Jr., the National Black Farmers Association’s president and a fourth-generation Virginia farmer, described the targeted stimulus aid as “a drop in the bucket” of what’s financially owed to farmers of color previously excluded from agency programs. But he called it “the most significant legislation” for Black farmers since the Voting Rights Act.

The USDA has previously settled class action claims covering decades of discrimination filed, separately, on behalf of Black, Hispanic and Native American farmers.

The coronavirus relief measure provides $4 billion for debt relief for minority farmers. Another $1 billion is dedicated to assistance, including help addressing heirs’ property issues, grants to historically Black colleges and universities and funding for a racial equity commission to “root out” discrimination at the USDA set up by Biden’s agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack Embraces New Agenda

Vilsack, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s agriculture secretary, had been criticized by some advocates for not being aggressive enough in addressing discrimination during his previous tenure running the department.

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But he embraced the assistance plan for minority farmers when Warnock introduced it and worked on its behalf. He applauded the debt relief provision as “historic” in a statement issued Saturday after the Senate passed the relief package.

“For generations, socially disadvantaged farmers have struggled to fully succeed due to systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt,” Vilsack said. “On top of the economic pain caused by the pandemic, farmers from socially disadvantaged communities are dealing with a disproportionate share of Covid-19 infection rates, hospitalizations, death and economic hurt.”

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