Issues involving agriculture often times end up in the courts. Deputy General Counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation, Travis Cushman, reminds farmers why the courts matter and why they're worth paying attention to.
Thomas Capps
Agriculture front and center in the courts. Hello and welcome to Tennessee Home and Farm Radio. I'm Thomas Capps
Travis Cushman
There's so many legal issues agriculture is front and center on.
Thomas Capps
Travis Cushman is the deputy general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation. Cushman has recently been busy presenting legal cases before the US Supreme Court involving agriculture. He recently stopped in Tennessee to remind farmers the importance of keeping an eye on legal issues and how they impact their operations.
Travis Cushman
People don't always appreciate how important the courts are. To get your public policy across. You have three branches of government, right? You have the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judiciary is one of the most important branches of government. And I'm here to talk about how important the judiciary is, but also how powerful our culture has been over the past several years in the courts, particularly the Supreme Court. In fact, as you alluded to this this past term out of the 58 cases, which is very, very few, only, not many cases at all, but the Supreme Court hears two of them were agriculture cases.
Thomas Capps
One of those cases was Sackett VS. EPA, which involved waters of the United States, an issue people in agriculture have been fighting for decades.
Travis Cushman
That's been a case that's, we've been fighting this issue for 50 years now, over how far the EPA and the Army Corps jurisdiction goes over our farmlands. They've been the EPA has been constant battled back on this and this was probably the biggest strike we've ever had on this issue with the second case it was 9-0, it was 9-0 against the EPA. That doesn't sound like division to me, but that sounds like the courts looked at this as they should have and said, EPA is overreached again.
Thomas Capps
Cushman says the WOTUS case that went in agriculture's favor is a good reminder of having Farm Bureau, and for farmers to stay up to date on the issues.
Travis Cushman
We are very very active in the courts. There are so many other cases I could talk about where we've had tremendous success. There are so many areas that we work in for Farm Bureau membership that we cannot do without that. So it's vitally important as you said, we'll continue fighting.
Thomas Capps
For Tennessee Home and Farm Radio. I'm Thomas Capps.
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