A federal judge has issued a restraining order against Joe Biden’s efforts to hand out reparations to minority farmers, on the basis that the policy deliberately excludes White farmers, Breitbart reports.
The order was issued by Judge William Griesbach, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who was first appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002. In his ruling, Judge Griesbach wrote that “the obvious response to a government agency that claims it continues to discriminate against farmers because of their race or national origin is to direct it to stop. It is not to direct it to intentionally discriminate against others on the basis of their race or national origin.”
The plan, which would hand out up to $4 billion in reparations to farmers who are black, Indian, Hispanic, or Asian, was part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed earlier this year. The goal of the policy was loan forgiveness by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which would pay off as much as 120 percent of direct or guaranteed loans to all farmers who qualified as minorities.
“Indeed,” Judge Griesbach continued, “Congress can implement race-neutral programs to help farmers and ranchers in need of financial assistance, such as requiring individual determinations of disadvantaged status or giving priority to loans of farmers and ranchers that were left out of the previous pandemic relief funding…But it cannot discriminate on the basis of race.”
Despite the ruling, the USDA has issued a statement declaring that it would still be implementing the program anyway, in defiance of Judge Griesbach’s ruling.
“We respectfully disagree with this temporary order,” a department spokesperson announced, “and USDA will continue to forcefully defend our ability to carry out this act of Congress and deliver debt relief to socially disadvantaged borrowers.”