BILLINGS, MT – Beef checkoff reforms have long been a part of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF USA) platform for its producer members. While this weeks U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge levied against the mandatory checkoff program from R-CALF USA, the organization’s CEO Bill Bullard says it affected important changes.
“While obviously disappointed that our effort to force even more needed reforms upon the beef checkoff program has ended in our first of two lawsuits, we are grateful for the important reforms we did achieve for U.S. cattle producers.
“Our objective in this case was to bring an end to the corrupt manner in which the beef checkoff program was being operated. Specifically, we set out to stop the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from unconstitutionally compelling U.S. cattle producers to fund the private speech of private state beef councils.
“We largely succeeded in that effort early in our case. In response to our lawsuit, the USDA took steps to assume necessary control over the speech of the state beef councils identified in our case to limit their ability to express private messages with the money that cattle producers are mandated to pay into the program,” Bullard said.
In earlier legal proceedings, according to Bullard, lower courts found that those corrective steps taken by the USDA effectively transformed the preliminary injunction R-CALF USA had initially won into the lasting outcome the group had sought — “an end to USDA’s allegedly unconstitutional government-compelled subsidy of speech.”
As the prevailing party in a preliminary injunction, the district court awarded R-CALF USA over $150,000 in legal fees.
More reforms won in this case, said Bullard, is that USDA has promulgated formal rules to a little-known policy the agency insists has long been in place allowing ranchers to opt out of allocating half of their checkoff fee payments to qualifying state beef councils.
Efforts by R-CALF USA to bring about additional reforms to the beef checkoff won’t end with this latest ruling by the Supreme Court. “We will now focus on achieving additional reforms in our second lawsuit that alleges the USDA violated the law when it entered into agreements with numerous state beef councils to assume control over those council’s messaging,” said Bullard. “More specifically, we allege the USDA ignored its legal obligation to conduct a formal rulemaking process before taking such action.”
