With the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund now able to join the USDA as co-defendants in one of several ongoing lawsuits against the USDA, there is renewed hope that section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan can move forward with its goal to respond to decades of well-documented discrimination against socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers by USDA. The decision was reversed in circuit court last week.
The American Rescue Plan section 1005 seeks to address discrimination by giving USDA direction to deliver debt relief to those in a socially disadvantaged group holding a qualifying loan. It also provides money and direction to USDA to start on a long-term path of removing the well-documented and long-standing discrimination in the department’s programs and advance equity.
A lower court had denied the Federation’s motion to intervene by joining the USDA as a defendant, but upon appeal to the United States Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit unanimously agreed to overturn the decision.
Plaintiffs argue that Section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan is unconstitutional as it offers debt relief “on the basis of race.” As written in the program, Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers (SDFR) are eligible for the debt relief as a component of the USDA’s goal of righting the wrongs of discrimination which have been embedded in the departments program from inception.
