Black farmers sue feds, again
Initial 1999 settlement over USDA loan discrimination derailed by Congress rewrite
DES MOINES, Iowa — The federal government has illegally broken a promise to pay off the debts of a group of Black farmers, according to a class-action lawsuit.
The group hopes to put pressure on officials to keep their word and restore funding dropped after a group of white farmers filed legal challenges arguing their exclusion was a violation of their constitutional rights.
The lawsuit filed in October remains active even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture moves forward with another effort to help farmers in financial distress in addition to paying farmers who the agency discriminated against.
John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association and one of four plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said that the new programs don’t match the USDA’s earlier offer to pay off 120% of the debt of farmers who are socially disadvantaged.
According to the lawsuit, this definition applies to more than 6,500 farmers who have “traditionally suffered racial or ethnic prejudice,” and are saddled with federal loan obligations.
The lawsuit says this includes Native Americans or Alaska Natives; Asian Americans; Black Americans or African Americans; Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders; and Hispanic Americans or Latino Americans.
The proposed payments and lawsuits follow a long history of the USDA refusing to process loans for farmers of color, and in some cases foreclosing more quickly than usual when such farmers who obtained loans ran into problems.
The federal government settled a lawsuit in 1999 filed by Black farmers and paid more than $2.4 billion, but court filings later acknowledged there were persistent problems in the USDA farm loan programs.
In 1910, Black farmers owned more than 16 million acres of land, but today they have less than 4.7 million acres.
Boyd was just 18 years old when he assumed an existing USDA loan upon buying his first farm in the early 1980s. He says walking into his local USDA office was like a return to the Jim Crow era.
The lawsuit, filed by Florida-based civil rights attorney Ben Crump, stems from congressional approval of $5 billion in debt relief for thousands of farmers of color. The money was included in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package in 2021.
White farmers in several states then filed lawsuits arguing that the law violated their rights, which prompted judges to halt the program in June 2021.
Faced with the likelihood of a lengthy court battle, Congress amended the law and offered financial help to a broader group. The new law allocated $3.1 billion to help farmers struggling with USDA-backed loans and $2.2 billion to pay farmers the agency discriminated against.
Boyd, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on his 1,500-acre farm in Baskerville, Virginia, said the federal government sent letters to minority farmers asking them to sign up for the payments, and it should have moved faster to provide the financial help.
By changing the rules after farmers sent back their signed documents, the government violated a contract, Boyd said.
He said the guarantee of future federal debt relief caused some farmers to invest in their farms, only to be left in worse financial condition after the law changed and payments were delayed.