Federal appeals court has kept in place a lower court’s injunction preventing USDA from allowing the Montana State Beef Council to use checkoff dollars to fund its advertising campaigns

A federal appeals court has kept in place a lower court’s injunction preventing USDA from allowing the Montana State Beef Council to use checkoff dollars to fund its advertising campaigns without consent.The district court did not abuse its discretion in granting the preliminary injunction, District Judge Brian M. Morris of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in his opinion, rejecting USDA’s appeal.The plaintiff in the case is independent rancher organization the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA). Public Justice is lead counsel in this constitutional challenge.“The Ninth Circuit’s decision today means that yet another set of federal judges has ruled that the government cannot compel independent ranchers to fund the speech of multinational corporations. This ruling may only apply to Montana, but the momentum towards reform of the entire Beef Checkoff system is clear,” David Muraskin, an attorney at Public Justice, said in a press release.The ruling relates to a lawsuit R-CALF filed against the national beef checkoff program alleging it is unconstitutional for the government to allow private beef councils like the Montana State Beef Council to keep and spend one-half of all checkoff dollars to pay for the beef council’s private speech when R-CALF members disagree with such speech.The private speech R-CALF members disagree with is the beef council’s message that foreign beef is the same as, and is just as good as, beef produced exclusively from cattle born, raised and slaughtered in the United States.The Beef Checkoff requires producers to pay $1 per head every time cattle are sold, half of which is used to fund the advertisements of private state beef councils, like the Montana Beef Council.