Black Farmers Win $1.25B Discrimination Settlement
On Thursday in Washington D.C, U.S. District judge Paul Friedman awarded $1.25 billion in damages to thousands of African-American farmers who claimed racial discrimination by the U.S. Agricultural Department.
The settlement was approved and will now allow farmers to be compensated for being denied loans and other government assistance that they needed.
President Barack Obama came out with a statement that praised the Judge’s decision and said: "This agreement will provide overdue relief and justice to African-American farmers and bring us closer to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on."
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Between 1999 and 2008, nearly 68,000 farmers filed lawsuits against the Agricultural Department, and now will finally be able to get their share from the $1.25 billion settlement.
They will be presented with two options for getting their money. They can either take an uncontested payout of $50,000, or they could escalate their case by providing further evidence of damages and get up to $250,000.
John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association, expressed his joy with the decision: "So many farmers had given up hope that this would ever come to pass," he said.
Not all farmers were equally as pleased, and some said at the trial that they were planning to opt out of the settlement and pursue more damages on their own.
The judge has said that there was a danger the funding could have been withdrawn if lawyers had attempted to change the conditions of the settlement. He also managed to get farmers who had missed the deadline for applying for compensation back on the case and legible to receive their share.
The black farmers are expected to receive their compensation packages within a year, with each case to be separately reviewed. It is one of the biggest settlements reached based on terms of racial bias in the nation’s history, an effect some have attributed to the influence to America’s first ever African-American president.
