The civil rights attorney for the plaintiffs, James Myart, has called this action a "watershed lawsuit" - the nation's largest civil rights case since the Pigford vs. Glickman lawsuit in 1997. That settlement, once hailed as a landmark victory for black farmers, has recently come under increasing criticism. That criticism rose in volume in August 2004, when the Environmental Working Group and the National Black Farmers Association issued a report saying thousands of black farmers were denied payment under the Pigford settlement. According to that report, of the 96,000 black farmers who sought restitution under the settlement, about 7,800 of them failed to meet deadlines for filing their claims. It also reported that another 63,815 were rejected by an arbitrator. All of these claimants had alleged that they were denied federal loans and subsidies because of their race. Sources have reported that about 92% of the people who got paid under the Pigford settlement allegedly had no documentation of ever having done business with the USDA, whereas claims from most "bona fide borrowers" were allegedly denied.

USDA officials have admitted that, in early 1983, the Reagan administration quietly disbanded and dismantled the civil rights enforcement arm of the agency, and that discrimination complaints had not been properly investigated since that time. Two federal reports, issued in February 1997, verified these allegations. Soon after that, the Pigford settlement was reached, covering the period from January 1983 to December 31, 1996 – and ultimately resulting in the denial of benefits already mentioned. Since that time, numerous government agencies and private groups have chronicled the treatment of black farmers, most finding that the agency’s practices have not changed substantially since the Pigford settlement.

This new lawsuit alleges that the USDA, when processing applications of African-American farmers for farm programs, willfully discriminated against them. When those farmers filed written discrimination complaints with the agency, it allegedly failed to investigate, although required to do so by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. When African-American farmers filed complaints of discrimination with the agency, the lawsuit alleges that it either: (1) avoided processing and resolving the complaints by stretching the review process out over many years; (2) conducted a meaningless, or "ghost investigation;" or (3) failed to do anything at all. These two acts (discrimination in denying the application and the failure to properly investigate after complaints were made) allegedly deprived African-American farmers of equal and fair access to farm credit and farm programs, as well as denying them due process of law, resulting in damaged credit and lost farms.

The action also alleges that the USDA intentionally makes insufficient loans to the farmers, and then disburses them late in order to force the farmers to default on their present loans, setting the agency up to later foreclose on the farmers’ land.