In 2026, The Trump Administration’s USDA began imposing unlawful, unprecedented department-wide terms and conditions on every new USDA grant. These terms and conditions substantially restrict grantees’ speech and programming in support of diversity and equity, bar using grant funding on whatever the administration says is “promoting gender ideology”, and limit grantees’ work in support of immigrants.
Five plaintiff groups — Agroecology Commons, Oregon Farm Corps, Syracuse-Onondaga Food Systems Alliance (SOFSA), Third Sector New England, and the Washington Farmland Trust — have sued USDA to block these terms and conditions, which put them in a high-stakes bind: If the Trump Administration deems them to have violated the terms and conditions – despite the vagueness and otherwise unlawfulness of the terms – they might not just lose future payments of the grant. The new terms threaten civil and criminal liability for making supposed false claims. This bind threatens the critical work these groups do to build a fair food system that works for everyone.
Plaintiffs are represented by FarmSTAND, Public Citizen, and Earthjustice.