Black Farmers Call For Changes In Settlement With USDA
Bart Sullivan / Scripps Howard News Service
WASHINGTON – A congressional panel Tuesday heard testimony that the historic 1999 settlement of black farmers' claims of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is so seriously flawed that it demands to be reopened and resolved.
More than 65,000 potential claimants were shut out of the process under terms of a consent decree that denies black farmers an opportunity to prove claims, Phillip J. Haynie II, a fourth generation Virginia farmer, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution.
Black farmers have complained since the settlement was entered into that the process was flawed. The Agriculture Department acknowledged a past history of discrimination and agreed to a two-tiered process of resolving claims. For both, claimants needed to prove that a similarly situated white farmer was treated better than they were, and many had trouble acquiring evidence from USDA or local officials to establish unfair treatment.
The Environmental Working Group, a nonpartisan Washington think tank that studies farm and environmental policies, made headlines in July when it released a report noting that nearly 40 percent of the approximately 23,000 farmers who were part of the settlement class had had their claims denied.
The EWG report also pointed out that of another 65,948 black farmers who sought entry into the class after word of the settlement spread, more than 63,800 were denied, mainly for not filing by court-imposed deadlines. It said the Department of Justice ran up 55,712 staff hours reviewing the claims.
An EWG lawyer, Arianne Callender, had been invited to testify before the panel Tuesday but her live testimony was cancelled Monday, bringing charges by EWG and the Memphis, Tenn.-based Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association that panel members would hear mainly a defense of the settlement by lawyers involved in administering it. But three minutes before the hearing got under way, a revised statement from Chairman Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, was circulated indicting another hearing, with some of the absent witnesses, will be held.
Chabot reviewed the history of black farming in America and said that the hearing had been called because, "in an ironic twist, the process that was created to provide a forum for those whose claims had been shut out, has itself shut out nearly two-thirds of all who wanted to have their discrimination claims heard.
"We cannot in good conscience allow a settlement that leaves out more potential claimants than it allows in to go unexamined or remain unresolved," he said.
Subcommittee ranking member Robert C. Scott, D-Va., said he was concerned about the adequacy of a settlement process that has left 70 percent of claimants without a determination on the merits of their claim.
Besides Haynie, the panel heard from Alexander Pires Jr., lead counsel of a team of lawyers who sued USDA; Randi Ilyse Roth, the court-appointed monitor of the case; and Michael K. Lewis, the court-appointed arbitrator of claims.
Roth said that, of the class members, 61 percent prevailed in their initial claims and that roughly 50 percent are prevailing with ongoing claims. About 13,500 claimants so far have been paid $831 million.
A group of black pastors, all in red ties, and the mayor of Jericho, Ark., attended the packed hearing after gathering Sunday night at the Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., and riding a bus to the nation's capital.
The Rev. James Perry of the Christian Fellowship Baptist Church outside Crawfordsville, Ark., said he wanted to attend the session because, for generations, his family has been treated unfairly by the USDA. He was a plaintiff in the class action suit.
"Every year at settlement time they'd say, 'Boy, you almost got out of debt.' That's what we'd be told every year," the 67-year-old Perry said before the hearing.
Jericho Mayor Helen Adams said her husband farmed in Crittenden County and sought entry into the lawsuit but died before he could perfect a claim.
"When I called back, they said they had closed it out," Adams said. "I'd like to see it opened."
Congress of Black Farm Organizations (CBFO)
Rally at USDA & Congressional Hearing
