Judge restores $127 million in USDA grants for Black farmers
Administration cut funding as a DEI program, federal court ordered it back while the lawsuit proceeds
WASHINGTON (MNTV) — A federal judge has temporarily restored roughly $127 million in Agriculture Department grants for organizations serving underserved farmers, handing a significant win to groups representing Black farmers and rural communities.
US District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the USDA to reinstate grants under the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program while a broader challenge continues.
The suit was brought by 24 organizations, represented by Earthjustice and legal partners, who argued the administration had unlawfully pulled funding from congressionally approved programs already serving farmers — programs built to widen access to land, financing, technical assistance, and markets for people long shut out of them.
The USDA terminated the grants earlier this year, calling them diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that no longer matched the administration’s priorities, and raising concerns about waste and fraud.
Court filings indicate the department selected grants for termination partly by searching for terms tied to diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate — a keyword sweep rather than a review of whether the programs worked.
Howell found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on key claims and that continued cancellation would cause serious harm to the organizations and the communities depending on them.
The order does not decide the case; it keeps the programs alive while it is litigated.
The stakes are concrete. Black farmers once made up a substantial share of American agriculture and now account for under two percent, a collapse driven by decades of documented discrimination in federal lending, land access, and assistance.
The grants fund business training, financing help, technical guidance, and market access — and losing them had already forced organizations to suspend programs, cut services, and lay off staff.
The administration frames the cuts as redirecting federal money toward neutral economic criteria.
But “neutral” funding built atop a century of unequal treatment does not undo that treatment; it locks it in. The court’s order lets the work continue for now, and the case will decide whether the government can erase remedial programs by keyword search.
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