Wyoming Rancher Petitions Supreme Court On Anti-White COVID Relief Program

A Wyoming woman is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a federal COVID-era relief program that favored non-white farmers and ranchers.

Albany County rancher Leisl Carpenter petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court this week for of her 2021 court case against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Farm Service Agency, her legal team announced Thursday.

The case references Section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which offered to pay up to 120% of farm and ranch loans for “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers. The USDA read this to mean Black, Asian, Hispanic and Native producers, according to court documents.

Carpenter, who is reportedly paying toward her own ranch loans, lost her lawsuit in both the federal district court and the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals because Congress turned around and repealed the offending law about a year later.

Both courts said Carpenter couldn’t keep seeking relief based on the injustice of a law that no longer exists. The case was moot, they ruled.

'What Kind Of Incentive?'

William Trachman, Carpenter’s attorney, said the courts’ mootness rulings could incentivize the federal government to unleash injustices and quickly repeal them.

“At the end of the day you can’t just call it water under the bridge and say there’s no remedy for discriminatory program payments made,” Trachman told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday. “If that were the rule, what kind of incentive structure would that set up for government? They’d have the ability to do so much unconstitutional stuff, as quickly as possible, then repeal it once they get caught.”

Trachman’s Monday petition to the U.S. Supreme Court argues that the government can’t lean on the mootness doctrine because it did not correct the injustice done under the law. 

At least four farmers or ranchers received a collective minimum of $160,218 under section 1005, court documents say.

A federal court could correct the law’s built-in racial discrimination by clawing back those funds or cutting a loan-forgiveness check to Carpenter in the interest of equality, Trachman said.

First, New Mexico

The issue is not that simple, according to an October ruling by a three-judge panel of the 10^th Circuit.

The USDA launched a pilot version of the program in New Mexico because that state has a large volume of eligible borrowers and a high level of experienced staff, says the ruling.

Those borrowers were also reportedly chosen based on their “willingness to be part of a pilot initiative.”

Amid a flurry of lawsuits alleging racism, courts blocked the program from going fully into effect — shutting down nearly 9,000 loan forgiveness offers the USDA was poised to send out in early June 2021.

Carpenter’s lawsuit, filed in May 2021, says the program excluded her for being white, so she suffered discrimination at the hands of government.

The 10^th Circuit judges countered, saying she couldn’t have received loan forgiveness during the law’s short life, not because she’s white, but because she doesn’t live in New Mexico where the agency tested the program.

“(The agencies) never denied Ms. Carpenter any benefit – or even any opportunity to receive a benefit – based on her race,” says the order.

Trachman characterized this as a thin justification.

“It’s one of these logical absurdity points,” he said. “An agency could always see where the lawsuits have been filed against it, and adopt more and more internal, unwritten policies.”

He called the New Mexico justification a “post-complaint factor,” and noted that Carpenter filed her lawsuit in May 2021, based on the actual text of the law and before the first payments emerged in New Mexico.

His petition points to case law giving plaintiffs legal standing when just one part of the government’s decision-making process relies on racial classifications.  

Discovery

The appeals judges ruled that Carpenter failed to show any injury stemming from the law’s brief existence and partial implementation.

Carpenter argued that if the case were allowed to progress to the discovery (evidence-sharing) phase, she may be able to prove other injustices, the ruling notes.  

The judges called this “purely speculative.”

Governmental Pivots

The order spends several paragraphs explaining how the concept of “voluntary cessation” does not apply to this case. The idea is that a government can’t simply change its laws to avoid losing a court case, but then go back to its prior, injurious policies.

But in this case it was Congress, not the USDA, that repealed Section 1005. And there’s no evidence that Congress is about to re-implement the COVID-era law either, says the order.

That left the appeals court comfortable with its mootness dismissal.

Trachman told Cowboy State Daily that he and his client agree that the government didn’t wage a “voluntary cessation” cop-out here, but he alleges that the government still has not righted the wrongs the law caused. 

“And they didn’t even allege (that they had),” he said.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.