In a roundtable forum, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comey (R-Ky) opened the floor to three individuals to discuss “lawfare” and how it affects agriculture producers.
Lawfare as it has become known, is the practice of the government weaponizing burdensome regulations and bringing frivolous charges against America’s farmers and ranchers. This brings unnecessary and stifling expenses upon independent ranchers, often costing them enough in legal fees and lost time that they are unable to keep their operations going. In many cases, the expenses have forced the farmers or ranchers to sell their land.
South Dakota’s Attorney General Marty Jackley; Colorado rancher and R-CALF USA Property Rights Committee Chair Shad Sullivan and Nevada rancher and executive director of American Stewards of Liberty Margaret Byfield were asked to speak.
Jackley
Jackley shared about his experience in representing over 100 ranchers in a case where he said the United States didn’t respect ranchers, tribal trust representatives the environment or a historic cemetery.
The agencies involved were the Corps of Engineers and US Department of Justice. The Oahe Dam dropped sediment that ultimately filled up some areas in South Dakota’s Moreau River
Said Jackley: “The United States, in 1960, made a determination to cut 70 feet off the span of a bridge creating a pinch point. They did it to save about $100,000. Their justification in writing was… they didn’t care what happened because this was an undeveloped area. It wasn’t an undeveloped area. This is where ranchers had their cattle operations. There was where there was a cemetery, there was a native community called White Horse. And because of that decision, ultimately the Moreau River filled up with sediment from the Oahe project coupled with the bridge project, coupled with ultimately there was a major flood, cutting off access, killing massive amounts of cattle. There were stories where young mothers had to take young daughters horseback across the river to save themselves. It flooded over that cemetary developed in the 1800s. It was a severe situation. The government’s only solution was to provide sandbags.
“Ultimately…a lawsuit was filed in 2003…at trial, the federal court judge held for liability against the United States and held that they were the proximate cause of injury. That was back in 2022. As I sit here today, the United States still has not resolved that case. It has created major problems with the environment and other concerns.
“The United States held that trust lands that involved ranchers and native americans have no property interests. And equally so on range units – where you combine parcels of land – set up by the BIA. They ultimately determined that that also is not a property interest. So they put these ranchers in jeopardy of their farming operations by bad decision they’ve used the civil courts to drag out litigation,” said AG Jackley.
Sullivan
During his testimony, Sullivan detailed how combinations of regulatory actions, litigation, and land-use decisions, driven through government agencies, public-private partnerships, and environmental groups, are increasingly being used in ways that threaten the viability of family ranching operations, restrict production, and erode private property rights.
“Across the country, we are seeing the same pattern of land taken through eminent domain, grazing reduced, and operations pushed out through what can only be described as death by a thousand cuts,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan urged lawmakers to closely examine how these pressures are being applied to ensure that policies, programs, and federal funding do not contribute to the erosion of private property rights or the loss of domestic production.
Citing multiple cases, including federal and state enforcement actions and ongoing disputes across the West, Sullivan argued these reflect a broader shift toward centralized control of land and resources, threatening agricultural production, rural communities, and national food security.
As part of his testimony, Sullivan called on the committee to investigate Washington state’s actions affecting the King Ranch, which was fined more than $250,000 and stripped of its state grazing leases over disputed wetland allegations.
That request follows formal comments submitted last week by R-CALF USA, raising concerns about a proposed transfer of more than 12,000 acres of state grazing land tied directly to the King family’s operation. In those comments, R-CALF USA stated that proceeding with the transfer before adjudication of the underlying allegations “would be at best opportunistic and at worst sinister.”
“I appreciate Chairman Comer and the committee’s attention to this issue and urge continued oversight to ensure policies and enforcement actions do not undermine independent producers or private property rights,” Sullivan said. “We will continue fighting to push back against actions that restrict production and threaten the future of American agriculture.”
Byfield
Byfield’s testimony regarding lawfare: “I want to give you a specific example. One of the fundamental problems is that the administrative agencies empower all three powers. They have the power to execute the law, the write the law and they also enforce the law. Let me tell you my story.
“We purchased a ranch in central Nevada in 1978. It’s a combination of private land and grazing allotments. On that land, we owned all the water rights. The ranch was 1100 square miles. When we purchased the ranch, it was very clear from the previous owners – this is why they were getting out – that the government wanted that property. So the very first thing that happened to us is the Forest Service filed a claim over every one of our water rights and then used the grazing regulations to force us off the land. In our very first grazing season there in a 105-day period, we received 45 letters and 70 personal visits from the Forest Service informing us of violations to our grazing permits.
“Let me give you an example of just one. They claimed we weren’t maintaining our fences up on Table Mountain. Dad sent an employee to go fix the fence. It takes a day to ride up, a day to ride 25 miles across the check the fence, and a day to ride back. When he finished, he handed dad a blue flag where they had marked our violation. Dad asked him what was the problem, and he said there was one staple missing from that entire fence. That was our violation.
“We went through 13 years of that kind of harassment. We filed three administrative appeals, after which they would cancel or reduce the grazing permit. We would spend two or three years fighting over that. We would finish the process, and the USFS or BLM would say, ‘gee, we’re sorry,’ and they would reinstate our permits and then we would start all over again.
“After 13 years of that, the final straw was that the USFS came in and confiscated a large amount of our cattle. They had canceled all of our permits to the point that wherever our cattle were, they would be violating some rule or regulation.
“When they came in to confiscate the cattle, they brought in 25 riders, half of whom were armed with semi automatic weapons. What they were trying to do was incite my father to come out and start a different kind of war. He let them take the cattle. That confiscation came in 1991 and it didn’t come with a court order. But they knew they could get away with it. So in September of 1991, my family did something pretty unique, we filed the first federal lands grazing takings case in the history of America. Four months later, the USFS filed two felony cases against my father, claiming he had removed timber off the federal lands. It was another issue, he was cleaning out a ditch, they claimed he needed a permit, and he stopped, knowing they would never grant him a permit. That was actually part of our takings case. So four months after that, he went through a jury trial, lost, and he was under house arrest for six months.
“Fortunately, the ninth circuit overturned that ruling unanimously.
“Fast forward, the claims court actually ruled with us. The judge issued us a $14.4 million dollar compensation award for the taking of our property. That was then appealed to the DC circuit, the case went up to three eastern judges that had no concept of the complexity of federal lands, and it was easier to side with the federal government so they overturned that decision.
“So we spent 13 years basically in hand to hand combat, 27 years in federal courts, and at the end of the day, we lost the takings case, we were never compensated, and ultimately we lost the ranch.
“To put this in perspective, when we bought the ranch, Carter was President. When a lot of the harassment took place, was in the Reagan and Bush years. I think one of the takeaways if I can convey anything to you, sometimes it doesn’t matter who we have at the top because the bureaucracy is such a sponge, the good policies dribble out to the bottom.
“Right now, today the mere fact that you are holding this hearing is a game changer. In all our time, we never had the opportunity to get before a body like this and tell our story or even have a conversation with the Secretary of Agriculture. Today we have a Secretary of Agriculture who is hands on, and jumps right into these cases and gets them resolved.
“But what’s going to happen when she’s not there? We have done nothing to fix the problem so that landowners aren’t facing this day in and day out. Our story is just an example of stories thousands and thousands of stories going on across America. We just had the chance to tell ours. A lot of other people didn’t have the ability to fight and they just had to go away.” – Margaret Byfield
