Federal judge rules to restore some USDA grants for farmers and underserved communities

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A federal judge this week ruled that the Trump administration’s move to terminate several grants to support farmers and underserved communities was likely “arbitrary and capricious,” and ordered  the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to restore five grants it canceled and cease the cancellation of a sixth grant.

The decision grants, in part, a preliminary injunction motion filed as part of litigation in which nonprofit groups allege the USDA “began engaging in a policy, pattern, and practice of unlawfully terminating federal grant awards” after President Trump issued executive orders requiring federal agencies to cut grants to support climate change efforts, environmental justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The grants in question, which support tree planting, growing food in underserved communities, training for new farmers and farmers’ adoption of climate-friendly practices, represent a small handful of the approximately 600 USDA grants terminated since President Trump took office, according to the court’s opinion.

The opinion, issued August 14 by Judge Beryl Howell with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, allows agriculture and sustainability groups suing the agency to start accessing funds from the terminated grants while the lawsuit is ongoing, said Carrie Apfel, the deputy managing attorney of the sustainable food and farming program for Earthjustice.

Earthjustice is one of several nonprofit legal firms representing the Agroecology Commons, Oakville Bluegrass Collective, Providence Farm Collective Corp., Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network in the lawsuit.

Without relief, some of the plaintiffs would suffer “irreparable harm,” the court determined, with some of the organizations forced to halt programs and others faced with shuttering them in the absence of the federal funding they had been awarded.

“Defendants have complete discretion to choose what grants to award, and defendants also have broad authority to terminate grants,” wrote Howell in her opinion. “Defendants flout Congress’s mandates, however, when they terminate grants for the very reason that the grants further the aims Congress explicitly instructed defendants to pursue.”

The USDA did not immediately respond to request for comment. 

Last spring, small farmers and food assistance groups across the country were hit with $1 billion in funding losses amid a wave of actions by the Trump administration, which cut key USDA programs including the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program.

While the court’s decision this week did not determine if any of the hundreds of other USDA grants were also terminated unlawfully, “the judge could find (as plaintiffs allege) a broad policy that affects all or some of these hundreds of terminated grants, vacate the policy, and thus provide relief to other grantees,” as legal proceedings for the case continue, Apfel said. 

Apfel said she is “cautiously optimistic” that the six grants contested in the case will not be terminated again in the future. The administrative record the USDA is required to provide by late September is bound to support that there was no reasonable basis for terminating them, she said.

“However, I unfortunately do not think this will end agency terminations more broadly, as I suspect the government will come up with other bases [and] rationales upon which to rest their terminations and try to offer more individualized justifications for those terminations to get around the court’s ruling here,” Apfel said.

(Featured image by Zoe Richardson on Unsplash.)