Wyoming rancher Liesl Carpenter filed an appeal with the United States Supreme Court last week. She claims that a COVID-era loan forgiveness program violated her constitutional rights as an American.
Carpenter owns and runs a 2,400-acre cattle ranch near Laramie. She says it's been in her family for more than 100 years. When the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a wave of economic uncertainty, she sought assistance through a USDA loan forgiveness program. But she said that she was ineligible—because she's white.
William Trachman of the Mountain States Legal Foundation will represent Carpenter in her challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court. He said the case is yet another example of racial discrimination that needs to be addressed.
"This is a country where racial equality is guaranteed by the Constitution," said Trachman. "We fought a civil war to get to this point. We saw the Supreme Court strike down affirmative action last summer, we've seen the Supreme Court strike down racial discrimination in jury selection. And so this is just one more context where courts need to address race discrimination."
The loan forgiveness program, part of the Biden administration's sweeping $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), launched in March of 2021. Roughly $4 billion was allocated to the program, which offered to help "socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers" by helping pay off up to 120 percent of their federal loans.
The Farm Service Agency, a branch of the USDA, defined "socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers" as "a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice." In response, a group of 12 farmers and ranchers from nine states filed a suit in U.S. Eastern District Court in Wisconsin in June 2021. Carpenter was not part of this lawsuit.
They claimed that the program violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. A Wisconsin judge halted payments to those farmers and ranchers who'd been approved to receive funding—but not before $1 million was given to at least four recipients in New Mexico, according to Trachman.
The loan forgiveness program was repealed after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. It was replaced with a similar program that didn't mention race as a criteria for relief. Trachman said that the damage had already been done.
"The history of our country is that we don't typically allow [the] government to discriminate based on race," said Trachman. "Here, you had a particularly terrible pandemic that affected the country and affected Liesl. And for some reason, the debt relief program was carving her out based on her race."
Carpenter's earlier case was dismissed as moot after Congress repealed the race-based loan forgiveness program in 2022. Trachman disagreed.
"A case shouldn't be moot until the government puts us back into a position where we're all equal under the law," said Trachman. "And here we know of at least four instances where the government used a recipient's race in order to give them money."
Trachman said that Carpenter challenged the program's constitutionality before payments were made to recipients in New Mexico.
"And the government did it anyway," Trachman added. "And now they're saying, 'Well, we've repealed this program. So you just have to take your lumps, it's water under the bridge, and we'll move on.' But of course, that creates an incentive structure where the government tries to do this more and more, and every time they get caught, they just repeal the program and say, 'It's moot. It's water under the bridge.'"
Trachman and Carpenter are awaiting a decision on whether the Supreme Court will hear their case.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
