Farmers Lawsuit: USDA Discrimination Claims From Pigford to DFAP

The Black farmers’ lawsuit against the USDA is not one case but a nearly thirty-year chain of them, starting with Pigford v. Glickman in 1997 and running through cases still active in 2026. The two Pigford settlements paid out more than $2 billion. A 2024 program under the Inflation Reduction Act added roughly $1.9 billion. Along the way, a 2021 debt-relief program aimed at minority farmers was struck down, a Sixth Circuit ruling shut out the heirs of deceased farmers, and a 2025 USDA rule stripped race- and sex-based preferences from farm programs across the board. Several lawsuits are still pending.

Pigford v. Glickman and the First Settlement

In August 1997, Black farmers filed a class action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that the USDA had denied or delayed farm loans and debt restructuring on the basis of race between 1983 and 1997, and had failed to investigate complaints of bias.¹ Federal farm loan decisions were made by locally elected county committees, historically composed of white men, and a denial by that committee often meant foreclosure for a small farmer who had nowhere else to borrow.²

The USDA’s own 1997 Civil Rights Action Team report, ordered by Agriculture Secretary Daniel Glickman after Black farmers protested at the White House, concluded that discrimination in the department’s programs continued “to a large degree unabated” and that the complaint resolution process had “failed.”³ Judge Paul L. Friedman later called that record a “persuasive indictment” of the department.⁴

On April 14, 1999, Friedman approved a consent decree with two claim tracks. Track A required “substantial evidence” of discrimination and paid $50,000 in cash plus loan forgiveness and tax offsets. Track B allowed higher damages under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard and used a third-party arbitrator. About 22,721 claimants were found eligible. By the end of 2011, roughly 15,645 Track A claimants and 104 Track B claimants had been approved, with total payments of about $1.06 billion.¹

Pigford II and the Late Filers

Tens of thousands of Black farmers missed the original filing deadline and never got a decision on the merits. The 2008 farm bill let late filers petition in federal court, but the money came only with the Claims Resolution Act of 2010, which added $1.15 billion and brought the total Pigford II settlement to $1.25 billion. President Obama signed it on December 8, 2010.⁵

Eligibility was limited to farmers who had submitted a late-filing request between October 1999 and June 2008 and had never received a merits determination. Track A again capped payments at $50,000 plus debt relief; Track B allowed damages up to $250,000.¹ Roughly 89,000 claim forms went out. About 40,000 came back, of which around 34,000 were complete. The claims administrator projected 17,000 to 19,000 approvals in the end, a success rate around 50 to 56 percent.⁵

The 2021 Debt Relief That Never Got Paid

Section 1005 of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act directed the USDA to pay up to 120 percent of outstanding loan balances for “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers, a category covering Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian producers. The program was expected to reach about 300,000 farmers, and the USDA mailed letters specifying the dollar amounts it planned to pay.⁶⁷

White farmers sued across the country, arguing the race-based eligibility was unconstitutional. In Miller v. Vilsack, Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction on July 1, 2021.⁸ In Wynn v. Vilsack, the Middle District of Florida issued a nationwide injunction after finding the program likely could not survive strict scrutiny. A third case, Faust v. Vilsack in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, began with a temporary restraining order that dissolved once the Florida injunction took effect.⁹

More than $4 billion in pledged debt relief was retracted.⁷ In August 2022 Congress repealed Section 1005 and replaced it with two race-neutral provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act: a $3.1 billion program for distressed borrowers and a $2.2 billion Discrimination Financial Assistance Program for those who had experienced USDA discrimination before 2021.¹⁰ With the underlying statute gone, Miller was dismissed as moot.⁸

Ben Crump’s Breach of Contract Suit

Farmers who had received USDA letters naming specific dollar amounts said they had relied on those written commitments, expanding operations and taking on new debt, only to have the money withdrawn when Congress repealed Section 1005. In October 2022 civil rights attorney Ben Crump filed a class action in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on behalf of John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, and other named plaintiffs. The suit alleges breach of contract, arguing the USDA letters were binding.¹⁰¹¹ The government moved to dismiss; Crump’s team filed its opposition in April 2023.¹²

The Discrimination Financial Assistance Program Payouts

The $2.2 billion Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, authorized under Section 22007 of the Inflation Reduction Act, opened applications from July 2023 through January 2024. It targeted farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who had experienced discrimination in USDA lending before 2021. The application was free and did not require a lawyer, though it ran 40 pages.¹³¹⁴

The USDA received about 58,000 applications and issued more than 43,000 payments on August 1, 2024, in two tiers:

Farmers and ranchers with current or past operations: over 23,000 people received between $10,000 and $500,000, averaging nearly $82,000.
Individuals who planned to farm but could not obtain a USDA loan: over 20,000 people received between $3,500 and $6,000, averaging $5,000.

Total payouts reached roughly $1.9 billion. Mississippi residents received the largest share, with 13,283 people receiving over $521 million, followed by Alabama, where 10,907 applicants received over $383 million.¹⁴¹⁵ Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said of the payments: “While this financial assistance is not compensation for anyone’s losses or pain endured, it is an acknowledgement.”

Legacy Claims for Deceased Farmers

The DFAP did not accept “legacy claims” filed by heirs on behalf of relatives who had experienced discrimination but died before they could apply. The Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association sued in August 2023 to force the USDA to accept those claims. The case reached the Sixth Circuit.¹⁶

On October 8, 2025, a three-judge panel affirmed dismissal. Judge Chad Readler, writing for the majority, held that “assistance” in the Inflation Reduction Act is forward-looking, meaning it helps with ongoing needs. A deceased farmer, Readler wrote, “is not engaged in an activity that money can help complete, nor does the farmer suffer any need that money can help relieve.” The court distinguished “assistance” from “compensation,” noting that when Congress wants to allow payments to estates it typically says “compensation” and names estates directly, as it did in the 1988 Civil Liberties Act on Japanese American internment.¹⁷

Judge Helene White concurred in the result but disagreed with the majority’s reading. She called the program “distinctly compensatory” and said legacy claims should at least be available for farmers alive when the law took effect.¹⁶ Attorney Percy Squire announced plans to seek panel rehearing and en banc review. The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse lists the case as ongoing as of mid-2026.¹⁸

Reverse-Discrimination Suits Reshape USDA Programs

A parallel wave of lawsuits sought to eliminate race- and sex-based preferences in USDA programs altogether. In Strickland v. USDA, four white Texas farmers argued that USDA disaster and pandemic relief programs discriminated against them through payment formulas favoring “socially disadvantaged” producers. In June 2024, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary nationwide injunction halting those payments.¹⁹ By February 2025 the federal government told the court it would renounce the preferences, and by May 2025 the USDA conceded the case.²⁰

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a separate Faust v. USDA in June 2025, challenging race and sex preferences in the Loan Guarantee Program, the Dairy Margin Coverage fee, and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. On July 10, 2025, the USDA issued a final rule removing “socially disadvantaged” designations from the Loan Guarantee Program. On February 9, 2026, the Department of Justice announced it would stop defending the Dairy Margin Coverage and EQIP preferences, agreeing they are unconstitutional. The USDA also agreed to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.²¹

The July 2025 USDA final rule, citing Strickland and Trump administration executive orders, removed race- and sex-based designations across conservation programs, farm loan programs, pandemic assistance programs, crop insurance regulations, and rural development grants. The USDA stated that because it had already addressed historical discrimination through “substantial efforts,” “further race- and sex-based remedies are no longer necessary or legally justified.”²²

The IRA Grant Freeze Cases

A different fight opened in early 2025 when the Trump administration froze billions in Inflation Reduction Act grants. On March 13, 2025, a coalition of small farms and nonprofits represented by Earthjustice filed Butterbee Farm v. USDA, later re-captioned Cultivate KC v. USDA, in the D.C. district court. The complaint alleges the freeze violates the constitutional separation of powers and is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. Reporting put the frozen IRA total at $12.5 billion, with Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, and Texas each losing more than $400 million.²³²⁴

A related case, Urban Sustainability Directors Network v. USDA, challenged the termination of grants under the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program. Plaintiffs alleged the USDA had identified grants for cancellation by running keyword searches for terms tied to diversity and climate change. On August 14, 2025, Judge Beryl Howell ordered the USDA to restore six grants, finding the terminations likely “arbitrary and capricious” and writing that the government “flout[s] Congress’s mandates” when it kills grants “for the very reason that the grants further the aims Congress explicitly instructed defendants to pursue.”²⁵²⁶

By May 2026, 24 additional organizations, including the Kansas Black Farmers Association and the Black Oregon Land Trust, had joined the lawsuit seeking to restore $127 million in terminated grants. The USDA had by then canceled 49 of 50 total projects under the program. The government said the canceled programs no longer aligned with agency priorities, alleged “egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars,” and argued the claims belonged in the Court of Federal Claims. The case remains active.²⁷²⁸

The Gap That Remains

Roughly $4 billion has now been paid to Black farmers across Pigford I, Pigford II, and the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program. Advocacy groups including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Black Farmers Association say the total still falls far short of the estimated $326 billion in land loss that Black farmers have suffered.²⁹

The remaining tools for going further have narrowed. The race-based ARPA debt relief was repealed. Legacy claims for deceased farmers were rejected by the Sixth Circuit, though a rehearing petition is expected. The July 2025 USDA rule stripped “socially disadvantaged” designations from a broad set of programs. What is still live in court: Ben Crump’s breach-of-contract claims over the withdrawn 2021 relief letters, the legacy-claims appeal from the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, and the Cultivate KC and Urban Sustainability Directors Network grant-termination cases in the D.C. district court. Farmers watching for further relief will get their answers from those dockets.

1
National Agricultural Law Center. Pigford v. Glickman: A Policy and Legal Analysis
2
Drake University Agricultural Law Journal. USDA Discrimination Against Black Farmers
3
Acres of Ancestry. Civil Rights Action Team Report
4
Drake University Agricultural Law Journal. USDA Civil Rights and Black Farmers
5
Every CRS Report. Pigford v. Glickman: A Policy and Legal Analysis
6
Heller School, Brandeis University. From Pigford to the Inflation Reduction Act
7
Farm Progress. Black Farmers File Lawsuit Over Debt Relief Delays
8
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Miller v. Vilsack
9
Penn State Agricultural Law. Faust v. Vilsack Order
10
Roll Call. Civil Rights Lawyer Crump Sues US Over Repealed Aid to Black Farmers
11
The Washington Informer. Ben Crump Files Class Action Suit Against U.S. Govt on Behalf of Black Farmers
12
Ben Crump Law. Minority Farmers Oppose U.S. Government’s Motion to Dismiss Breach of Contract Lawsuit
13
USDA. DFAP FOIA Information
14
Farm Progress. USDA Makes DFAP Payments to Producers in the South
15
Vegetable Growers News. Young Farmers React to USDA Discrimination Financial Payments
16
Tennessee Lookout. Black Farmers to Seek Rehearing After Appeals Court Rules Against Them
17
Justia. Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Ass’n v. Rollins, No. 24-5119
18
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Black Farmers Agriculturalists Association v. Vilsack
19
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Strickland v. United States Department of Agriculture
20
Mountain States Legal Foundation. Strickland v. Vilsack
21
Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. USDA Settles WILL Lawsuit, Removes Race-Based Discrimination in Nationwide Farming Programs
22
Federal Register. Removal of Unconstitutional Preferences Based on Race and Sex in Response to Court Ruling
23
Earthjustice. Farmers, Nonprofits Sue Trump Administration for Freezing IRA Grant Funds
24
Fordham Law Environmental Law Review. IRA Grant Freeze Legal Challenges
25
The New Lede. Federal Judge Rules to Restore Some USDA Grants for Farmers and Underserved Communities
26
Bloomberg Law. USDA Ordered to Restore Terminated Grants to Farmers, Nonprofits
27
Capital B News. Black Farmers USDA Grants Lawsuit
28
Earthjustice. Recently Shuttered USDA Program Grantees Join Suit to Restore $125M in Illegally Canceled Grants
29
NAACP Legal Defense Fund. LDF Lauds Release of $2 Billion in Payments to Over 43,000 Farmers