Daily Archives: June 28, 2023

A year ago this month, Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito decided to see if a 160-acre plot of land in Grady County, Oklahoma, would produce. In a lease filed with the Grady County clerk, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito entered into an agreement with Citizen Energy III for revenue generated from oil and gas obtained from a plot of hard scrabble she inherited from her late father. It is one of thousands of oil and gas leases across Oklahoma, one of the top producers of fossil fuels in the United States.

Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alitos financial disclosures labeled mineral interests was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alitos wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales.

In the past, Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his vast investment portfolio. Many of these recusals were born from an inheritance of stocks after the death of Alitos father-in-law, Bobby Gene Bomgardner. Because Citizen Energy III isnt implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alitos holding in Oklahoma doesnt appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alitos confirmation hearing in 2006 and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.

There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his familys net wealth, Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept. Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real life, run-of-the-mill political villain.

In May, Alito penned a majority decision in Sackett v. EPA which radically scaled back the Clean Water Act, reducing its mandate by tens of millions of acres. According to a statement released by President Joe Biden, the ruling puts our nations wetlands and the rivers, streams, lakes and ponds connected to them at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers and businesses rely on.The plaintiffs position in the case was backed by the American Gas Association, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association.

Prior to targeting the Clean Water Act, Alito joined the courts other conservative justices in attacking another set of EPA powers under the Clean Air Act in West Virginia v. EPA. The 2022 ruling gutted the EPAs ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

A spokesperson for Alito did not respond to The Intercepts request for comment.

Since his appointment in 2006, Alito has operated as a judicial firebrand, making high-profile appearances at Federalist Society events to excoriate liberal doctrine. He drafted the historic opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, lashing out in public after the decision was leaked early to the press.

Unlike other federal courts, the Supreme Court does not have a legally binding ethics code. While justices are required to file financial disclosures under the Ethics in Government Act, the choice of whether or not to recuse from cases involving a conflict of interest is entirely self-enforced.

This loophole caught the publics attention in April, when a ProPublica report detailed the lavish, undisclosed gifts and financial support Justice Clarence Thomas and his family received from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow. Since then, other justices financial dealings have been called into question, including Neil Gorsuch for an undisclosed property sale to a lawyer with business before the court, and John Roberts, whose wifes employment as a legal recruiter for Supreme Court-bound lawyers raised a host of ethics questions.

Alito now finds himself in a position similar to Thomas, after another ProPublica report from last week described a fishing trip and private jet ride the justice took with conservative operative Leonard Leo and billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, valued at over $100,000. While pictures from the trip suggest that Alito personally appreciates the bounty of Americas dwindling unpolluted landscape, his rulings in environmental cases suggest that politically he does not.

Before publishing its investigation into Alitos relationship with Singer whose business model is organized around using the courts, including the Supreme Court, to extract payments from distressed bond issuers ProPublica reached out to Alito with a list of questions. Alito responded by penning a defensive essay in the Wall Street Journal, which published the response before ProPublica had even published its story.

What makes political figures who violate ethics laws so exceptional is how much obviously unethical behavior is legal under our current overly permissive rules, Hauser said. Our current ethics regime assumes that a persons financial interests need to be extremely specific in order to influence their behavior, a worldview that ignores the foresight rich people and corporations regularly demonstrate.

Prior to the lease, Alito ruled on cases with the potential to impact gas and oil prices, both nationally and in Oklahoma. In Oneok, Inc. v. Learjet, Inc., decided in 2015, Alito ruled with the majority to head off an attempt to block state antitrust laws from being applied to natural gas companies under the Natural Gas Act. Oneok, the largest supplier of natural gas in Oklahoma, runs an active natural gas pipeline through the Alito plot.

In 2017, Alito delivered an address at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, that further clarified his position on fossil fuels role in climate change. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide is not harmful to ordinary things, to human beings, or to animals, or to plants. Alito said. Its actually needed for plant growth. All of us are exhaling carbon dioxide right now. So, if its a pollutant, were all polluting.

In 2021, Alito joined the majority in PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey to protect the right for companies with federal backing to exercise eminent domain in the seizure of state property. PennEast Pipeline, a natural gas distributor, sought to maintain its ability to seize land in the construction of a pipeline, and thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, it was able to preserve a tactic for pipeline construction, which, if overturned, would have significantly impacted the ability for the natural gas industry to expand pipelines and production.

Over the past two years, Citizen Energy has launched a buying spree of wells and land rights, positioning itself as one of the top private producers in Oklahoma. It operates over 200 miles of natural gas-gathering pipelines and over 700 wells, and produces over 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It is financially backed by the private equity behemoth Warburg Pincus.

Go here to read the rest:

Alito's Wife Leased Land to an Oil and Gas Firm While Justice ... - The Intercept

Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

First, they tell us we need to give up beef and eat bugs. Then they tell us our houses are too big. They insist we can survive without air conditioning. Our cars and trucks guzzle too much gas. If we cant afford a new electric vehicle, they tell us walking and biking are much better. They tell us the animals we eat are more precious than the babies they abort. They tell you that Johnny can be Jennie and that pornography on library shelves is good for your kids. If you object, theyll seek to take away your children.

Now, they want you to eat duckweed. A writer at the Washington Post recommends it as a great source of protein. Skip the peanut butter and jelly and smear some of the weed on your daily ration of bread. You can take solace in saving the planet from your inborn diabolical nature (especially if you have pale skin!)

Its not quite Soylent Green, but it reminds me of another dystopian film. When I was a teenager, Logans Run was a popular movie. So much so that it was later re-made and also became a TV series. Im reminded of a scene with the legendary actor Roscoe Lee Browne playing a robot. One that delighted in eating plankton. You can watch what Im talking about below.

In the meantime, if I want a steak and I can afford it, no granola-munching liberal is going to restrain me. As I understand it, this remains the land of liberty. You can eat all the duckweed, plankton, and kale you want. Its your choice. And probably why youre so miserable.

There are some really obscure comic and movie references in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania here are the best ones.

Read this article:

Liberals Latest Substitute for Idaho Beef is a Weed - News Radio 1310 KLIX

Last Thursday, in the case of Arizona et al. v. Navajo Nation et al., the Supreme Court dealt the tribe a serious blow. The case involved the future division of the waters of the Colorado Riveran issue of existential concern to millions of people across seven Western states, including a hundred and seventy thousand who live on the Navajo reservation. The Colorado is drying up, because of drought and overuse, a situation that is inseparable from the climate crisis. In light of the coming fight over the rivers water, the Navajo had sued the Department of the Interior and other federal agencies, asking for an accounting of what rights to that water the government held in trust for the tribe, under an 1868 treaty, and for a plan to manage those rights. Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado then intervened in an attempt to block that process. Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, joined by four other conservative Justices, which peremptorily turned the Navajo awayanother chapter in an old, sad story. Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissent, joined by the three liberal Justices, which passionately vindicated the tribes rights. That lineup of Justices is part of a new, curious story of Gorsuchs emergence as something of a legal champion for Native Americans.

Gorsuch, of course, is a conservative himself, and not a mild one. Donald Trump nominated him to the Court just eleven days after his own Inauguration; Mitch McConnell, who was then the Senate Majority Leader, had held the seat open after Justice Antonin Scalia died, nine months before the Presidential election. In most areas of law, notably those to do with guns and abortion, Gorsuch has been the Justice that conservatives wanted him to be. Not so with tribal law. Adam Liptak, of the Times, recently called him the fiercest proponent of Native American rights on the Court.

There are various theories about the source of Gorsuchs commitment, including his childhood in the West, his textualism-based judicial philosophy (if one reads the text of the treaties that the U.S. signed with the tribes, one will find a lot of unkept promises), and his experience dealing with tribal-law cases while a judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Colorado. But there are Westerners and textualists who have little time for the tribes, and Gorsuch stood out on the Tenth Circuit, too. (A number of Native American organizations and tribes supported his confirmation.) The more compelling question might be whether Gorsuchs interest is more than a quirksomething that actually makes a difference. Does it change how one sees Gorsuch; the culture of the Court; or, most important, the situation for Native Americans?

Its worth noting that Gorsuch doesnt just join with the liberal Justices when it comes to tribal rights; he often seems to lead them. In Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin, which was decided on June 15th and involved bankruptcy law, Gorsuch was the lone dissenter on the side of the Chippewa. His opinion quoted a 1789 letter from Secretary of War Henry Knox to President George WashingtonGorsuchs tribal-law writings tend to be rich in historical referencesand included a strangely convincing analogy between tribal sovereignty and Neapolitan ice cream. (The point was that the Constitution gives federally recognized tribes a unique political status.) In a second ruling on the same day, in Haaland v. Brackeen, the Court turned back challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act in a 72 decision by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but did so largely on narrow technical grounds. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion to emphasize that a future challenge to the law might be decided the other way. Gorsuch wrote a separate, fiery concurrence laying out the family-destroying policies that the I.C.W.A. was meant to redress. Those included government-backed boarding schools meant to kill the Indian children who were forcibly sent there. Gorsuch recounted how Congress had authorized the Secretary of the Interior to prevent the issuing of rations or the furnishing of subsistence to Indian families who would not surrender their children.... When economic coercion failed, officials sometimes resorted to abduction. Justices Jackson and Sotomayor joined that concurrence in part, while Kagan did not.

Haaland v. Brackeen, at least, was a victory for the tribes, if a tentative one. Arizona v. Navajo Nation most definitely was not. Kavanaugh brushed aside all of the issues raised by the 1868 treaty with the testy complaint that the federal government shouldnt be asked to secure water for the Navajos. He made it sound as if the tribe were asking the feds to bring a truckload of Perrier to a party. He wondered what they might ask for nextfor the government to do their farming for them? Kavanaugh sounded so put-upon that it was a wonder he didnt call the Navajo uppity.

Gorsuch wrote that Kavanaugh was turning down a request the Navajo Nation never made. They werent asking for anything special, he wrote. Everyone agrees the Navajo received enforceable water rights by treaty. Everyone agrees the United States holds some of those water rights in trust on the Tribes behalf. And everyone agrees the extent of those rights has never been assessed. Gorsuch wrote about how, over decades, the Navajo had tried to get an answer to the basic question of how much of the Colorados mainstream they were entitled toand the government wouldnt tell the tribe. Now that water is being divvied up, in conditions of scarcity, without anyone speaking up for them.

In 1961, in the midst of an earlier round of litigation involving the river, the Navajo had petitioned to be allowed to interveneto appear on their own behalfbut the federal government successfully opposed them, saying, in effect, that representing the tribes in this area was its job. And yet Kavanaughs opinion suggests that asking the government to actually do that job is outlandish. Gorsuch compared the tribes dilemma to that of people who go to the Department of Motor Vehicles only to be told, over and over, that they are on the wrong line.

What gives Gorsuchs opinions on tribal law such power is, again, his command of history. Kavanaugh suggests that water is a novel wish for the tribe. Gorsuch writes that water was, in fact, the decisive issue in the negotiations that led to the creation of the Navajo reservation, adding, Really, few points appear to have been more central to both parties dealings. Between 1849 and 1868, U.S. troops brutally expelled the Navajo from their landsburning their homes, storehouses, and fields; shooting those who couldnt keep up on forced marches known as the Long Walkand drove them onto a stretch of dry terrain known as the Bosque Redondo, where the scant water available was laced with unwholesome minerals.

The Navajo kept up their resistance, with the goal of returning home; finally, General William Tecumseh Sherman was sent to negotiate what became the 1868 treaty. Gorsuch quotes the records of the negotiations, in which Sherman used the question of water as an inducement for the Navajo to settle. He offered to send the tribe to yet another place, but his counterpart, the Navajo leader Barboncito, refused to accept any land outside their home territory, because of its known water supply. They got a piece of that landthough less than Sherman had led them to believewhich now forms their reservation. Gorsuch quotes a historian who described that partial victory as a testament to the will of the Navajopersonified in the intense resolve of Barboncito.

An opinion like that makes for good, instructive reading. But does it matter? The fatalistic answer might be no: all that Gorsuchs vote means is that the Navajo lost 54, rather than 63. The conservatives still have a super-majority, and on most days Gorsuch is still the Gorsuch who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. From that pessimistic perspective, his seriousness about treaties and the tribes constitutional status serves only to highlight the hypocrisy of so-called textualists and originalists on the Court who dont seem to think, when it comes to the tribes, that language or history matter quite so much. In an extraordinary concurrence in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, Justice Clarence Thomas frets that the frequent appearance of the terms trust relationship and trust in the Courts tribal-law jurisprudencewith regard to the U.S.s role as a trustee managing certain resourcesmay lead people to take those words too seriously. For Thomas, they refer merely to the trust that Indians place in the Federal Government. After all, Thomas writes, without a hint of irony, many people around the world trust our government to do the right thing.

But dissents do matter; they have often been part of a long process of building an alternative consensus on the Court. At the very least, other Justices presumably read and, to some degree, have to reckon with Gorsuchs arguments. (Its possible that the decision of certain conservative Justices to, effectively, punt on the constitutionality of the child-welfare law and let it stand for now is to some extent ascribable to his influence.) Gorsuch will have had dozens of clerks by the end of his tenure on the Court. Some will go on to be law professors and judges, or even Justices. (Gorsuch was a clerk for Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy.) Theyll carry some of his tutelage in this area with them. And, along the way, they will likely work with clerks for liberal Justices when they join these opinions. In a Court, and a country, as polarized as this one, such exchanges can be helpful. Its not bad to be reminded that people are complicated. Elie Mystal, of The Nation, after puzzling over Gorsuchs lack of empathy for other groups, wrote that the Justice might be the strongest defender of tribal sovereignty who had ever sat on the Court, and I choose to be thankful for that.

Significantly, Gorsuchs Navajo Nation opinion is written not as a doleful tragedy but as a call to action. As he sees it, the contradiction between the governments position in 1961 and the one it is taking now offers a legal opening for the Navajo to try, again, to intervene in the Colorado River litigation on their own behalf. As they did at Bosque Redondo, they must again fight for themselves to secure their homeland and all that must necessarily come with it, he writes. A Supreme Court Justice isnt going to be the hero of this story, in other words; Barboncito is.

The rest is here:

Does It Matter That Neil Gorsuch Is Committed to Native American ... - The New Yorker

On a sprawling Marthas Vineyard estate not far from the seashore, Deici Cauro adjusted a baseball cap to keep the burning sun at bay. She was crouching to pull weeds with her bare hands when a familiar voice called out from the other side of the yard.

Pots! her employer called, and she motioned for Ms. Cauro to follow her to another garden nearby.

Vamos? Ms. Cauro replied in Spanish, wondering if they had decided to move.

S, vamos, I guess, whatever that means, her boss replied, prompting both women to share a hearty laugh.

When Ms. Cauro fled Venezuela last summer, she never imagined that one day she would be working and living on a wealthy island south of Cape Cod, surrounded by boats and mansions of the kind she had seen only in the movies.

It has been nine months since the government of Florida, under the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, chartered two flights from Texas that picked up Ms. Cauro and 48 other newly arrived migrants and dropped them off on Marthas Vineyard, a liberal enclave that until then had little firsthand experience with the surge in migration on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The political move repeated this month, when Florida officials arranged two more flights of migrants from Texas, this time bound for California was an attempt to force Democratic leaders many miles away to deal with a surge in migration that has affected states along the border. The trips left many of the Venezuelans confused and alarmed. Some were told they were headed for Boston or Seattle, where there would be plentiful jobs, assistance and housing.

But neither was the destination; it was Marthas Vineyard, and it was the end of the busy summer season when vacationers begin retreating home to offices and schools. There were no jobs and no places for them to stay. Volunteers put the new arrivals up at a local church and arranged for transportation.

Within days, most of the migrants were gone, headed for other parts of Massachusetts and places like New York, Washington and Michigan cities better equipped than a small island to settle people who had arrived with little or nothing of their own.

As it turned out, though, not all of them left.

Ms. Cauro is one of at least four migrants who have quietly stayed behind on the island, forming bonds with a community that opened what doors it could. Ms. Cauro, 25, is working as a landscaper. Her brother, Daniel, 29, and her cousin, Eliud Aguilar, 28, found jobs in painting and roofing.

They first stayed in the homes of Marthas Vineyard residents who invited them in, and then began earning enough money for a two-bedroom house, with the four of them chipping in $1,000 a month each. They got bicycles to ride around town.

I did not even know where Marthas Vineyard was. And now I feel welcomed by everybody here. Im working, making friends and this is home for me now, Ms. Cauro said with a wide smile. This is home now. I dont want to leave.

The flights arranged by Florida came as the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona were busing thousands of migrants away from the border, straining support systems in cities like New York, Washington and Chicago.

Many of the 49 migrants who were flown to Marthas Vineyard are still struggling. Some have not yet obtained work permits, and many are still living in shelters, unable to afford permanent housing.

One of them, a 42-year-old man named Wilson, who had fled Venezuela after deserting an armed group there, is living in a shelter in a Boston suburb. He was hoping to open a restaurant or a remodeling business, but for now is working odd jobs and doing whatever I can, he said.

We were 49 migrants, and we have 49 different stories, he said. I want to reach the American dream like everyone else.

The four migrants who managed to stay on the island have also had challenges. Ms. Cauro said she still found it hard to trust strangers after the deeply unsettling sense of being cast adrift by people who she now thinks used her and her relatives as political pawns.

She said it was important to her to pay her own way and not become a burden on the community that welcomed her. Her employer, a woman in her 60s who declined to be named because she was employing someone without a work permit, said Ms. Cauro felt like part of the family.

Ms. Cauro understood enough to nod her head. We came here to work in any job, no matter how hard. We are just happy to be living here.

Life in La Isla, as the migrants call it, feels a lot like the new life they had imagined. But getting there was a tremendous challenge. Ms. Cauro and her family members, facing an oppressive government and economic collapse in Venezuela, had set out for the United States a month before reaching the border.

Her brother, Daniel, had left behind a wife and two children, Daniela, 8, and Reynaldo, 2. They traversed the Darien Gap, a treacherous strip of jungle that connects South and Central America. In Mexico, the group jumped on La Bestia, a network of cargo trains headed north where many migrants have lost their limbs and even their lives.

When they arrived at the Texas border, Mr. Aguilar recalled seeing people in his group lose their footing and be swept away by the strong current of the Rio Grande. It was so difficult seeing them sink to the bottom of the river, Mr. Aguilar said.

The group finally crossed into the United States near Eagle Pass, Texas, and found refuge at a shelter in San Antonio. But after the limit of five nights, they found themselves stranded outside, tired and hungry. We were desperate, Mr. Cauro said.

After several days, in early September, they met a woman named Perla, who handed them McDonalds gift cards and offered them a hotel and free flights to Washington or Oregon, where the woman said they would find work and housing, the migrants recalled.

But 15 minutes before their plane was to land, they said, something felt wrong. Mr. Cauro and his group were handed red folders with a cover that proclaimed, Massachusetts Welcomes You.

Ms. Cauro and her brother said they were in shock and felt like cattle when they were dropped off near a high school field in Edgartown, one of the six towns that make up Marthas Vineyard, and were told to knock on doors. Some people were passing out, having panic attacks, Mr. Cauro recalled.

Father Chip Seadale of St. Andrews Episcopal Church was out of town when the flights landed, but immediately got on the phone when he heard what had happened. If they dont have anywhere to stay, lets just put them up in the church, he told his colleagues.

The fire department and Salvation Army volunteers set up cots in the church, and local residents poured in with clothing, food and money. Father Seadale said one woman rode her bike to the church and handed over a check for $10,000.

There was generosity from all over the country, he said, pointing to a wall at the church covered in letters from supporters. One envelope addressed to The Church They Brought The Immigrents to managed to make it to the right address. An enclosed letter read, Thank you for treating the migrants as people.

The community came together, Father Seadale said. Whatever was the intention of Mr. DeSantis, he said, he raised a level of awareness and consciousness. To this day, whenever I go and I say that Im from Marthas Vineyard, people congratulate me for the way we handled it.

Not everyone welcomed the new arrivals with open arms.

One longtime resident, Angela Cywinski, said the situation put the community in a tough position, trying to accommodate people who could not legally be hired at restaurants or hotels. Most of the immigrant workers on the island, she said, have put in the necessary time and money to obtain legal status. Ms. Cywinski said she knows migrants from Brazil who have spent up to $60,000 and waited years to obtain visas to live legally on the island. It is not fair when people jump the line, she said.

Ms. Cauro and others had to find work under the table until their work permits are approved, something that usually takes several months as part of the asylum process.

Rachel Self, an immigration lawyer who has worked with the migrants, said the Venezuelans are working hard and paying their own way.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Ms. Self arrived at the house where the Venezuelans were living, on a quiet road. They were playing salsa music and cooking caldo de res, a red-meat soup common in Venezuela. Over dinner, they shared laughs and made plans to visit the home of the abogada the lawyer, as they have come to know her and also the beach nearby made famous by the movie Jaws.

Marthas Vineyard is not the place they had imagined for themselves, they said, but it has become the place where they hope to put down roots. Mr. Cauro said he would like to bring his wife and two children from Venezuela once his own legal status was secured.

When his family calls him on FaceTime, he tells them to be patient. He has not seen them for a year, but he promises it will not be too much longer.

His 2-year-old son, Reynaldo, wearing a straw hat he rarely takes off, always asks when he will be home.

Im already home, Mr. Cauro replies. One day, he reminds his son, he will also be home with him.

Read the original:

How Migrants Flown to Martha's Vineyard Came to Call It Home - The New York Times

MEMPHIS, Tenn. The common portrayal that the U.S. Supreme Court as being made up of liberal vs. conservative voting blocs simply isnt true, said Tim Bishop, an attorney who has argued significant cases before the high court.

Bishop, a partner atMayer Brown,in Chicago has argued eight cases and briefed more than 80 before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was among the presenters June 9 for the 10th annual Mid-South Agricultural and Environmental Law Conference. Bishop covered several SCOTUS-related topics, including decision composition, recusals, and their potential effects on decision making and implications of the Dobbs decision leak.

The conference opened with Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center, which organized the conference more than a decade ago. The first Mid-South was held at Harrahs, one of the riverboat casinos in Tunica, Mississippi.

We literally shut it down, Pittman said with a laugh. We were the last thing ever held at Harrahs Casino.

When the first attendees walked out the door, casino personnel chained it closed behind them.

Not a small chain, but a big chain with a big lock, Pittman said. And it was over. We shut it down.

The following year, Pittman said, the conference was moved to its current site, at theUniversity of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law.

Bishop may be best known for the case challenging Californias Proposition 12, which would bar the sale of pork from pigs not raised under specific conditions. The high court upheld the law as constitutional.

Bishop said that in reading about SCOTUS in the media, one would have the impression that this is a deeply conservative, pro-business court with a solid six-justice majority intent on remaking the law the way the Federalist Society wants it to be.

Its not true, he said and cited several cases from the weeks preceding his presentation to show that justices did not vote in a six-justice block, including the National Pork Producers Council and Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation vs. Ross, the Proposition 12 case, Andy Warhol Foundation vs. Goldsmith and Sackett vs. EPA, the Waters of the United States case.

None of the cases from the last few weeks has the lineup that the New York Times expected to occur, he said.

New Orleans attorney Ebony Woodruff called heirs property the worst problem you never heard of. Its the legal term for land inherited without a will.

Woodruff, a former legislator and consul, was the first woman elected to represent District 87 in the Louisiana House of Representatives. She is currently the director of the Agricultural Law Institute for Underserved and Underrepresented Communities atSouthern University Law Center, one of the NALCs partners.

Over 70 percent of Americans dont have a will or have one thats invalidated, she said.

Heirs property is found in dozens of counties from Texas to Virginia in areas that tend to be poor and rural.

Heirs property is generally framed as a black issue, but it affects many people. Its a leading cause of black land loss, Woodruff said.

With heirs property, typically there are multiple owners, sometimes through multiple generations.

Without obtaining agreement from everyone with a share, owners cant get loans or mortgages, conduct leasing or be part of U.S. Department of Agriculture programs. And as she found after Katrina, many with heirs property could not get FEMA disaster relief.

Woodruff said the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, restructures the way partition sales occur, offering protection to heirs property owners. The law has been adopted in 20 states and the Virgin Islands, including Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi.

Robert Moore, an attorney and research specialist with theAgricultural and Resource Law Programat The Ohio State University, a partner of the NALC, discussed how farm families can prepare themselves for long-term care.

Twenty percent of 65-year-olds will need some type of long-term care for longer than five years, he said. One-third may never need it.

Its this more than five years that puts a lot of farms in jeopardy, Moore said. Sixty-nine percent of 65-year-olds will need three years of care two years at home and one in a facility.

He said that that one year will be unpaid home care by a spouse or other family member. One year will be paid care; someone who comes in to feed and bathe the family. One year will be in a nursing home.

Moore, citing a survey by GenWorth Financial, said the cost of the care at home would be nearly $62,000, while the one year of nursing home care would be more than $94,000, bringing the average long-term care costs to $156,672.

About two-thirds of 65-year-olds can expect a long-term care cost or expense, of about $150,000, he said.

Moore said throwing everything into a revocable trust may not be the right tactic, and its important for farms to conduct a long-term care risk assessment to know what strategy to use in facing the challenges that come with age. Risk assessment enables users to analyze the potential long-term-care costs, income, and savings to determine the actual risk to farm assets.

This risk assessment is really a requirement of good long-term planning, he said.

Moore said a tool to help farms conduct a risk assessment is availableonline.

Rusty Rumley, senior staff attorney for NALC, talked about the growing demand for solar power and the growing demand for land on which to place panels.

Solar is going to take up larger chunks of land, he said. He noted a caller from Texas who was approached by a solar company to lease his pasture land. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the average rental rate for pastureland in Texas was $7.70 an acre. The pastureland owner signed a 25-year lease with the solar company for $2,500 an acre.

Rumley cautioned that solar leases are not like ag leases.

They may look a little squirrely, because they are longer in length, more complicated and require a lot of due diligence on the part of the land owner, he said. They may affect your kids and your grandkids.

And just because a landowner signed a lease, doesnt mean the project will be built, Rumley said. Another bit of caution involves the end of the lease, since some leases arent clear on who would decommission the solar arrays.

The 11th Annual Mid-South Agricultural and Environmental Law Conference is set for June 6-7, 2024 in Memphis, Tennesse.

Follow this link:

Tenth annual Mid-South Conference looks behind the bench at ... - Stuttgart Daily Leader