NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

the supreme court has spoken...again

by NCBA Chief Executive Officer Colin Woodall

In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association that the Checkoff was constitutional. Writing for the majority in the 6-3 decision, Justice Antonin Scalia relied on the government speech doctrine by writing “the message set out in the beef promotions is from beginning to end the message established by the Federal Government…” In short, since the Checkoff was established by Congressional action and implemented through USDA’s administrative order, the Checkoff is government speech.

In 2016, R-CALF filed a lawsuit against USDA claiming the Montana Beef Council, and other State Beef Councils structured as private entities, were not being true to the government speech doctrine. This is because R-CALF did not feel that there was adequate oversight by USDA. For six years, USDA has been working to defend the Checkoff in this case. Montana ranchers Watty Taylor, Gene Curry and Lee Cornwell showed tremendous leadership and fortitude by joining the Montana Beef Council, Nebraska Beef Council, Texas Beef Council, and Pennsylvania Beef Council to intervene in the case and support USDA’s defense. This opened the door for NCBA’s involvement, and one year ago the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vindicated the Checkoff and dealt another legal defeat to Bill Bullard’s R-CALF. That didn’t stop them, though, and they followed up late last year by petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case. In late June, the Supreme Court denied R-CALF’s petition thus ending this case and once again protecting the Checkoff. The Supreme Court found no reason to re-hash old arguments when it was clear that USDA has appropriate and adequate oversight to ensure that all Checkoff funds are being spent in compliance with the Beef Promotion and Research Act and the accompanying USDA administrative order that implements the Checkoff.

While I wrote about R-CALF’s Supreme Court petition late last year, I felt that we needed to talk again about the group that is doing Bill Bullard’s bidding. Public Justice, which was founded in 1982 as Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, has been providing R-CALF with the legal work on this case. All you must do is look at their website to find that the company they keep is not looking out for the best interests of America’s cattle producers. Public Justice’s staff come from organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States, the Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, and other groups that have a track record of antagonizing agriculture. In one of R-CALF’s filings with the U.S. Supreme Court it came to light that they were also doing work for PETA and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

Bill Bullard’s friends and attorneys are the same ones representing groups that want to put us out of business. PETA’s mission statement says they oppose a human-supremacist world view called speciesism, and that they focus their attention on areas like food animal production in which they believe the largest number of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time. They routinely use shock tactics and celebrities to draw the media’s attention to their efforts in eliminating animal agriculture, hunting, and animal research. They have been behind hidden camera efforts on farms, dairies, and ranches, in which they get animal extremists to gain employment under false pretense in order to secretly film what they believe is cruelty to animals. The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), much like PETA, supports plant-based diets and has lobbied for moratoriums on CAFOs and large-scale dairies. They criticize us for greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. ALDF spends its resources trying to defeat “ag-gag” laws because they interfere with their targeting of animal ag operations via undercover videos.

In watching activist groups work in D.C., I know that part of their strategy is to divide industries in order to get them to fight each other. While these intra-industry fights are going on, attention is diverted from the activist efforts to weaken the targeted industry. Public Justice does not care about the Checkoff, but given the backgrounds of their staff and connections to animal activists, you can bet that doing whatever it takes to weaken the cattle industry is an opportunity they will not pass up. The Checkoff belongs to you. Yes, there are disagreements about the program, but the last thing we should tolerate is allowing a group purporting to represent cattle producers bring activists into the discussion. As I write this, Public Justice is representing R-CALF in yet another lawsuit against USDA trying to dismantle the Checkoff. I’ll keep you posted.