Motion for Preliminary Injunction Filed Urging Court to Set Aside USDA’s Unlawful Termination of Grants Supporting Farmers and Communities

Today, plaintiffs in the June 5^th lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), filed a motion for preliminary injunction urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to restore unlawfully terminated grants. As the lawsuit alleges, following several Trump administration’s Executive Orders, and at the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), “Defendants began engaging in a policy, pattern, and practice of unlawfully terminating federal grant awards,” including those awarded to the plaintiffs.

The original June 5^th lawsuit was brought by plaintiffs Urban Sustainability Directors Network, Oakville Bluegrass Cooperative, and Agroecology Commons. Earlier this week, two additional groups — Providence Farm Collective Corp. and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy — joined the litigation.

USDA’s sole basis for terminating these and hundreds of other awards en masse is that they allegedly “no longer effectuate” new agency “priorities” — namely, the priorities to eliminate any government spending it can portray as related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), climate change, or environmental justice. However, USDA’s policy and practice of terminating grants in this manner wholly disregards the grant awardees’ rights under the U.S. Constitution, federal regulatory requirements, and in many instances, Congress’s mandates. Plaintiffs and countless other awardees have been and continue to be irreparably harmed by this unlawful policy and practice, and thus injunctive relief is necessary and appropriate to prevent further injury during the pendency of the litigation.

“Providence Farm Collective’s Incubator Farm Program is the only new entry farmer training program providing farmland access, farming and business education, shared equipment, resources, and markets access in Western New York, that has a goal of launching participants to viable farm businesses,” said Kristin Heltman-Weiss, Executive Director at Providence Farm Collective (PFC) Corp. “The USDA termination disrupts PFC’s efforts to innovate solutions to work for the transition and protection of farmland and to build the skills of 21 aspiring farm entrepreneurs. Technical assistance through the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) — the program under which we were awarded our now-terminated grant — has supported PFC farmers in increasing yields by over 400% and farm sales by over 400%, with the loss of funding directly impacting farmers’ yields and profits. This funding loss multiplies harms across our region’s economy, its farmers, and its food system.”

Plaintiffs devoted extensive time and resources to develop their grant proposals, and then, once awarded, acted in reliance on these grants by hiring employees, providing and promising new or expanded programs to community members and sub-awardees, entering into contracts with local small businesses, expending their own resources to invest in the projects’ long-term success, and foregoing other funding opportunities that they reasonably believed they would no longer need.

“The purpose of this grant is to get essential resources and information to community members who are deeply connected to Minnesota’s farm and food system but often are shut out of the development of farm programs — that includes farmers, producers, food service directors, food shelf operators, conservation program directors and more. We spent the first part of our grant term gathering input on what resources and information they most needed, building a framework and drafting content with the help of our partners,” said Erin McKee, Community Food Systems Program Director, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “The abrupt and unexpected cancellation of our grant comes at a critical juncture just before we were planning to finalize and publish our ‘Farm and Food Systems 101’ resources to make this information available to all, negating all the work we have put in over the last year and a half.”

“USDA’s practice of arbitrarily revoking grant funding is both unlawful and harmful. It has already forced organizations like the Plaintiffs to lay off employees and break contracts or end important projects that are meant to serve communities. As a result, many people are losing out on promised services like fresh food access and urban cooling programs,” said Carrie Apfel, Deputy Managing Attorney of the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice. “This policy and practice not only harms plaintiffs and hundreds of other terminated grantees, but it also violates basic legal principles and must be stopped immediately.”

Today’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction, filed by Earthjustice, Farmers Justice Center, and FarmSTAND, calls upon the court to order the USDA to restore vital grants, enjoin USDA’s unlawful policy and practice of terminating grants in this manner, and return to the grant conditions that existed before USDA engaged in these unlawful actions.