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A
white farmer named Scott Wynn of Jennings, Florida, in May had
challenged U.S. President Joe Biden's plans as he faced farm
loans and financial hardship during the pandemic. He said the
debt relief program discriminated against him by race.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard blocked the
government's $4 billion aid package to farmers of color on
Wednesday, ruling that the plaintiff had established a "strong
likelihood" of the policy violating his right to equal
protection under the law.
Wynn, who is challenging Section 1005 of the American Rescue
Plan Act, which provides debt relief to "socially disadvantaged
farmers and ranchers," is likely to succeed, Howard said in the
ruling filed in the Middle District Court of Florida.
The ruling added that "Section 1005's rigid, categorical,
race-based qualification for relief is the antithesis of
flexibility."
A separate judge in Wisconsin had also granted a temporary
restraining order on the debt relief plan on June 10.
The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) had planned to start the
payments to farmers in June.
For decades, USDA employees and programs have discriminated
against socially disadvantaged farmers by denying loans and
delaying payments, resulting in $120 billion in lost farmland
value since 1920, according to a 2018 Tufts University analysis.
Black farmers have been promised relief from federal
discrimination in the past, only to be repeatedly disappointed,
Lloyd Wright, a Virginia farmer who served as the director of
the USDA's Office of Civil Rights in the late 1990s and early
2000s, has said earlier.
He suggests eligible farmers continue paying on loans so that
they do not end up being behind if the program is permanently
blocked.
(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru;
Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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