Georgia congressman calls lawsuit against race-based aid for farmers 'discrimination at its worst'

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A Democratic congressman blasted a lawsuit against the Biden administration's $4 billion race-based federal relief program for farmers as "racial discrimination at its worst."

"I strongly support and thank [Agriculture] Secretary Vilsack for standing up and fighting for this critical, urgent and much-needed legislation. This shameful lawsuit is racial discrimination at its worst against our nation’s Black farmers and socially disadvantaged farmers – and I do not say this lightly, because white farmers already own 98 percent of all the farmland in the United States and Black farmers own just one percent," Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., said in a statement on Monday.

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"The very survival of Black farmers is at stake – and this would be an unpardonable sin because we, as Black slaves, did the hard work and provided the foundation for America’s great agriculture system for free, for over 200 years, under the lash of the slave masters’ whips," Scott continued.

Scott praised Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for defending the program.

"In 1930 when my grandfather bought our family farm, where I was born, in Aynor, South Carolina, 21 percent of all the farms in the South were owned by Black families. Now, it is just one percent. I am in full support of Secretary Vilsack and the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) effort to fight this lawsuit," Scott said.

In this Jan. 13, 2021 file photo, Rod Bradshaw stands in a field of wheat on his farm near Jetmore, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel File)

A Wisconsin federal judge ordered a temporary halt to the program earlier in June after a lawsuit from a group of White farmers alleging discrimination.

Milwaukee District Judge William Griesbach issued a temporary restraining order, noting the White farmers "are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim" that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s "use of race-based criteria in the administration of the program violates their right to equal protection under the law," according to NBC News.

"The obvious response to a government agency that claims it continues to discriminate against farmers because of their race or national origin is to direct it to stop: it is not to direct it to intentionally discriminate against others on the basis of their race and national origin," Griesbach continued. 

The USDA said it disagreed with the restraining order. 

"We respectfully disagree with this temporary order and USDA will continue to forcefully defend our ability to carry out this act of Congress and deliver debt relief to socially disadvantaged borrowers," a USDA spokesperson told Fox News. "When the temporary order is lifted, USDA will be prepared to provide the debt relief authorized by Congress."

The $4 billion provision was part of President Biden’s American Rescue package, and the funds were to be used to pay up to 120% of "socially disadvantaged," or Black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American farmers' outstanding debt. Twelve White farmers from nine states filed suit arguing that excluding them from the aid on account of race violated their constitutional rights. 

"I think you have to take you back 20, 30 years, when we know for a fact that socially disadvantaged producers were discriminated against by the United States Department of Agriculture. We know this. We have reimbursed people in the past for those acts of discrimination, but we've never absolutely dealt with the cumulative effect," Vilsack said in May, defending the aid. 

The USDA settled multibillion-dollar discrimination lawsuits with minority farmers in 1999 and 2010. 

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"Secondly, when you look at the COVID relief packages that had been passed and distributed by USDA prior to the American Rescue Plan, and you take a look at who disproportionately received the benefits of those COVID payments, it's pretty clear that White farmers did pretty well under that program because of the way it was structured and structured on size and structured on production. So I think there is a very legitimate reason for doing what we are doing," the secretary continued.

Black farmers accounted for approximately one-sixth of farmers in 1920, but less than 2% of farms were run by Black producers by 2017, according to USDA data.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks to the International Association for Food Protection. (AP)

Minority farmers have maintained for decades that they have been unfairly denied government loans and other forms of assistance. Many of them complained that under Vilsack’s previous tenure – as agriculture secretary during the Obama years – he did little to settle a backlog of 14,000 discrimination complaints from the Bush administration. The Bush administration had found discrimination in only one of those cases.

Farmers spoke out against the relief program in March.

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"Just because you're a certain color you don't have to pay back money? I don't care if you’re purple, black, yellow, white, gray, if you borrow money you have to pay it back," Kelly Griggs, who runs her 1,800-acre farm with her husband in Humboldt, Tennessee, told Fox News in an interview.

"My reaction is, where did common sense go?" Griggs said. "We can't strike. We can't stop. That's the part that really sucks. These people in Washington who make decisions for us and our livelihood have probably never stepped foot on a real farm."

Fox News' Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.