Background: A farmer in Wisconsin, where the Trump Administration’s Department of Agriculture (USDA) is being sued over “discriminatory programs” that allegedly deny financial assistance to farmers based on race and sex, according to the lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Inset: Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, June 22, 2024. (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP).
The Trump administration has been accused of discriminating against white dairy farmers by using “racial and sex-based classifications” to prevent “white males” from obtaining access to certain loan and grant programs, according to a new lawsuit.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a conservative nonprofit law firm, filed a complaint Monday in federal court, seeking injunctive relief to prevent the government from “applying racial and sex-based classifications” when selecting candidates for financial assistance programs, including the Loan Guarantee Program, the Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) Program, and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP).
“These three are not the only ongoing programs at USDA that discriminate based on race and sex. Up to two dozen other discriminatory programs are ongoing and identified,” allege lawyers for dairy farmer Adam Faust, who successfully sued the Biden administration in 2021 for race discrimination related to USDA’s Farmer Loan Forgiveness Plan, in the complaint.
“Farmers, like all other Americans, deserve to be assessed as individuals, not as statistics or as means toward achieving some quota, preference, or balancing based on race or sex,” Faust’s team says. “Unfortunately, this is not new.”
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According to WILL, Faust is a “white male dairy farmer” from Calumet County, near Chilton, which is about 75 miles north of Milwaukee. “He is a double amputee who milks 70 Holstein cows and farms 200 acres to feed these cows,” the complaint says.
Faust is suing Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and the USDA, saying they failed to respond to written correspondence sent by WILL and Faust related to demands they had. His complaint notes how President Donald Trump issued executive orders this year “prohibiting the discrimination present in these three programs,” but Rollins and the USDA have “failed to end” discriminatory and allegedly illegal “preferences, mandates, policies, programs” in both the private and public sectors, according to Faust’s attorneys.
“On April 8, 2025, Mr. Faust wrote a letter to Secretary Rollins warning her of this issue and threatening litigation,” the complaint alleges. “Six congressmen wrote a letter as well, reiterating the unconstitutionality of these discriminatory programs. Mr. Faust has received no response from Secretary Rollins.”
Faust claims that if he “were not white or male, he would have been eligible” for the financial programs listed in his lawsuit. The Loan Guarantee Program, for instance, should consider him eligible for “up to 95% of the outstanding principal of the loan” but it does not because he’s white. For the DMC Program fee, he claims, “every participant is exempt from this fee except for white males,” per the complaint.
“Mr. Faust experienced similar discrimination in 2021 when the Biden Administration forgave certain farm loans based on race,” the complaint says, noting how an Eastern District judge ruled in favor of Faust and declared the program to be “unconstitutional” race discrimination.
“As in that case, this Court should again declare this type of discrimination unconstitutional and enter an injunction prohibiting Secretary Rollins from implementing these race and sex preferences,” Faust’s complaint concludes. “Unless USDA stops this ongoing race and sex discrimination, or Congress repeals these laws, farmers like Mr. Faust will continue to bear the burden of litigating against the government in federal court.”
