District Court for the District of Montana has supported a lower court order preventing the involuntary collection of funds to support USDA’s Beef Checkoff program by the Montana Beef Council

The U.S. District Court for the District of Montana has supported a lower court order preventing the involuntary collection of funds to support USDA’s Beef Checkoff program by the Montana Beef Council (MBC). The court affirmed a ruling from December that suspended fund collections that was filed by the Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA). The group’s lawsuit claimed that the involuntary collection without the payers’ consent violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, according to a news release from R-CALF USA. That original challenge asserted that the MBC needed to obtain permission from those who pay the $1-per-head fee before the money could be spent for beef advertising or promotions. “For well over a decade R-CALF USA members fought to reform what we considered a terribly mismanaged national beef checkoff program,” R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said in a statement after the most recent ruling. “Yesterday, after a meaningful, law-based evaluation of our concerns, we won. We hope this will be just the first step of correcting over a decade’s worth of beef checkoff program mismanagement.”