Commentary: American Farm Bureau fights for legal rights

People often ask me, now that Barack Obama has been elected president, whether my job at the American Farm Bureau Federation will become more challenging. My answer is typically, "Yes, but it became more challenging before the election." Why? Because there is a coordinated effort by coalitions of environmental and animal welfare activists to file lawsuits attempting to change how farmers do business.

Our nation's courts are flooded with lawsuits aimed at pushing the agenda of well-funded coalitions of environmental and animal welfare activists unhappy with the world they live in and agriculture in particular. The lawsuits are usually filed by groups unhappy with an EPA, Department of Interior or USDA action or, more commonly, with government inaction. Other times, these coalitions sue individual farmers and ranchers and act as private enforcers of the law as they see it. All together, these legal actions try, and sometimes succeed, in controlling how farmers and ranchers run their businesses, raising producers' costs and making it difficult to stay in business.

AFBF has always engaged in legal advocacy, but what many people do not know is that in the last several years, the legal team's role at AFBF has greatly expanded both in people (including me) and resources. Litigating in federal courts is expensive, so we rigorously assess what cases we can become involved in and how to use our scarce resources wisely to provide help to our farmer and rancher members. We monitor the federal courts to see who is filing what and where and share that information with our state Farm Bureaus. We work closely with our public policy staff, particularly when legislative and regulatory issues are closely tied to legal controversies in the courts. But not all of what we do is behind the scenes, preventing the legal controversies from starting in the first place.

We are very active in litigation over federal regulations, many of which are directed at farmers and ranchers. If a rule affecting agriculture violates the law, we challenge it. If it benefits agriculture, we defend it.

In one court, we are defending producers' ability to use pesticides around water without having to get an expensive and time-consuming Clean Water Act permit. In another court, we are defending new grazing regulations. We are also challenging an air quality rule that will result in burdensome regulations on agriculture. In another court, we are challenging an EPA rule that would make livestock operations get a Clean Water Act permit by this February, even if they do not discharge waste.

When the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that could impact our farmer and rancher members, we file a "friend of the court" brief to make sure the court hears our voice. This year, we filed three briefs with the Supreme Court and we hired some of the most talented Supreme Court specialists to do it. We just won one of those cases that should make it harder for activists to obtain preliminary injunctions against federal regulations in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in San Francisco.

We are working to convince the Supreme Court to overturn the Kelo case, the case where it said your town government could take your farm and turn it into a shopping center so long as the town received tax revenues from the deal. We are also writing briefs to get a clearer understanding of when the Army Corps of Engineers can claim jurisdiction over your land because the corps thinks it is a wetland

Even with all of our planning, sometimes litigation happens almost overnight. When this happens, AFBF is up to the task and gets results. For example, one of the largest instigators of litigation, the National Wildlife Federation, tried to completely stop the USDA Critical Feed Use initiative this past summer. For many farmers and ranchers, this initiative was a lifeline and they spent precious funds to prepare themselves to take advantage of the offer. AFBF saw the harm that would befall individuals who relied on USDA's word and decided something had to be done quickly. On a Thursday we reached out to our fellow agricultural groups to coordinate and by Tuesday morning, we collectively filed 29 farmer and rancher statements showing how the lawsuit would harm their businesses. We then explained to the court its legal obligation to weigh those interests against the Wildlife Federation argument of environmental harm. In an unusual move, the court did weigh the burden to farmers and ranchers and rejected the Wildlife Federation demand to completely and immediately stop the program.

The AFBF legal team will continue its dedication to making sure that our federal government operates within the law, regardless of who is president. We will also be there as a voice to counter the environmental and animal welfare coalitions' teams of lawyers and experts.

(Danielle D. Quist is the assistant general counsel for public policy at the American Farm Bureau Federation. She can be reached at danielleq@fb.org.)