Jackson, Tennessee: Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) and Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) filed a second lawsuit in federal court challenging unconstitutional race discrimination in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s farmer and rancher loan forgiveness program. The challenged provision in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provides automatic loan forgiveness of up to 120 percent of the loan amount for farmers and ranchers, unless they are white.
The unconstitutional program also excludes white farmers from re-applying for government-backed loans, making the Biden Administration’s “relief” package doubly unconstitutional.
SLF and MSLF filed the lawsuit in the Western District of Tennessee on behalf of Robert Holman, a fourth-generation Tennessee farmer. Rob is a husband and a father of a young daughter. He farms with his father in Union City, Tennessee, where they have 2,200 combined acres to grow crops, mostly corn, and soybeans. Rob’s family’s primary income comes from farming.
To help farmers and ranchers weather the pandemic, Congress decided that it was going to forgive federal farm loans – erasing the full amount of the loan and sending the forgiven debtor 20 percent of the loan’s value in cash to cover any resulting income tax liability.
But unlike other farmers and ranchers, Rob does not qualify for federal farm loan forgiveness because of the color of his skin.
Discriminating on the basis of race is illegal and unconstitutional. The federal government cannot grant specific benefits based solely on race, regardless of policy motivations. This is especially true here where Congress stated that the goal of the $4 billion challenged race-based loan forgiveness had nothing to do with financial strain caused by Covid-19 pandemic, but instead was enacted to end “systemic racism.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the way to stop race-based discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The federal government’s use of government-sponsored race discrimination as a tool to end “systemic racism” is patently unconstitutional.
“In this case, a farmer is excluded from government benefits because of his race. Under the U.S. Constitution, the government has violated Mr. Holman’s equal protection rights,” said Kimberly Hermann, SLF General Counsel. “Supreme Court decisions over the past sixty years in multiple contexts demonstrate the positive movement toward the constitutional goal of color-blind racial equality by repeatedly throwing out government-sponsored benefits programs based solely on race.”
“The COVID relief farm loan program is doubly unconstitutional,” added Braden Boucek, SLF Litigation Director. “The law provides 120 percent relief from the federal government for non-white farmers on existing loans, and specifically excludes white farmers from the same benefit. The USDA has also stated that the law also allows non-white farmers to re-apply for new loans through the federal program, while specifically excluding white farmers.”