Supreme Court Showdown: White Farmers Ignite Battle Over Biden’s Racist Program

(Congressional Agenda) – On Monday of this week, the Supreme Court was asked to weigh in on a challenge against a now defunct coronavirus policy from the Biden administration that offered farm loan forgiveness for non-white ranchers. A petition filed by Wyoming-based farmer Leisl Carpenter says she was excluded from eligibility for the program. This ladies and gentlemen is called “racism.” When you take a group of individuals based on color and provide them benefits that others are not eligible for because they are not the same ethnicity or skin color, it creates a protected class, elevating one group above another and giving them more rights than others enjoy.

As per a report from the Washington Examiner, “In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 COVID-19 stimulus bill, allocating $4 billion for the forgiveness of loans aimed at assisting socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. Leisl Carpenter, a white farmer whose ranch in Wyoming’s Big Laramie Valley suffered during the pandemic, was excluded from the program on the basis of her ethnicity, according to a petition obtained by the Washington Examiner.”

One section of ARPA, 1005, created a debt relief program for what it referred to as “socially disadvantaged” ranchers during the COVID pandemic, information from the Department of Agriculture disclosed.

“Carpenter was ineligible for Section 1005 debt relief because she is Caucasian,” the petition says, making the case that the program created violations of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the 5th Amendment. The petition goes on to claim that not long after ARPA went into effect, the Farm Service Agency of the USDA put out a Notice of Funds Available that defined “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers’ based on race.”

“Carpenter’s dispute was initially brought to federal court by the Mountain States Legal Foundation on behalf of her and 11 other farmers who did not qualify for the loan forgiveness plan, which provided up to 120% debt relief for certain ‘socially disadvantaged’ farmers and ranchers,” the petition noted.

“The program was quickly enjoined after one of Mountain States’ suits in Tennessee succeeded at the federal district court level in July 2021 — but not before the federal government had already distributed test payments under the race-based provision that amounted to roughly $1 million, according to court records,” the WE report revealed.

However, despite success in the Tennessee case, the suit filed by Carpenter did not lead to a successful injunction before Congress managed to repeal Section 1005 after passing the Inflation Reduction Act in the summer of 2022 — which did nothing to reduce actual inflation by the way — and replaced the loan forgiveness program with a similar one that left out any mention of race.

The payments that were made before the repeal were not addressed.

“Carpenter appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, arguing the federal district court in Wyoming was wrong to side with the Justice Department’s argument that the case became moot following the program’s repeal. In a per curiam order on Oct. 17, 2023, a three-judge panel upheld the district court’s findings that the repeal ‘rendered any equal protection injury impossible,'” the article divulged.

The 10th Circuit stated that the case would not be able to move forward due to the $1 million in payments that were made to farmers living in the state of New Mexico and remarked that geography played an important part in deciding Carpenter’s eligibility.

“If Appellees’ administration of the test payments can be said to have excluded Ms. Carpenter from consideration at all, it was because she lives in Wyoming rather than New Mexico. Even if she were not white, Ms. Carpenter would have been excluded from the test payments,” the decision read.

“The 10th Circuit’s rule creates a road map for invidious discrimination whenever the federal government wants to do something,” William Trachman, Mountain States’ general counsel, went on to tell the Washington Examiner on Monday.

“Whether that’s Biden’s DEI across all forms of government or some other reparations program or Congress’s decision to focus on race at the Federal Aviation Administration, all these programs, the goal for the government could be to do as much as they possibly can, in secret, as fast as they can. And then pay no price,” Trachman added.

In order for the case to be heard during oral argument sessions it would require four justices to agree to take a look at the petition and vote in favor of granting certiorari.