# Oral argument — LaBatte v. United States > Briefs, arguments, decisions, and more. URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/argument%3A36999 ## Record - **Collection:** Oral argument - **Document type:** Oral argument - **Published:** June 6, 2018 ## Text Mr. Cardaw. Good morning, Your Honors. May it please the Court. I'm representing my client, Tim LaBatte. He's a member of the Sisseton-Wapton Tribe of South Dakota, and he's present in the Could I ask you a preliminary question? Is this program set up as a result of the government settlement still one that exists? In other words, if you are today, I don't know if you had an original five-year term, but there was a provision for extensions. Does the program still exist that someone could apply for relief under it? No, the purpose of the earlier case in the U.S. intervened individually on behalf of Mr. LaBatte, and so the effort there was to address Mr. LaBatte's rights. I don't think you're understanding my question. My question, there's a program that was set up pursuant to this settlement between the government and some plaintiffs, and it was a Track A and Track B, and there are administrators to decide these claims, right? Correct. Does that That's why the program terminated, and then we tried to intervene in the U.S. District Court, led to the D.C. Circuit opinion, and I guess for my part, we think this is an important case because of a simple principle that we're borrowing from the Sakhna Singh case in the D.C. Circuit, and that's sort of simple, right? That the genus of cases under the Tucker Act is breach of contract, and there's a species called breach of settlement agreement. When a breach of settlement agreement claim is brought against any party, like a private party in the Sakhna Singh case, and the defendant raises the argument that, hey, look, there's a waiver and there's finality in the settlement agreement, the Switzer Circuit, the D.C. Circuit said, well, wait a minute, and the D.C. Circuit, just like the Court of Federal Claims and this Court, do this jurisdictional inquiry at the beginning of the case. If there's a breach of settlement agreement claim, and the defendant's defense is finality and waiver arising from the settlement agreement, then it's not a jurisdictional defense, it's a substantive defense, and the D.C. Circuit said in its opinion in Sakhna Singh, remand, and if there was a breach of the settlement agreement, then finality, waiver, the other defenses, the defendant that's raised from the settlement agreement don't apply and jurisdiction exists. If there was no breach of the settlement agreement determined, then there would be no jurisdiction. So the pages 23 and 24. Can I just ask, what you contemplate if you get to go back to the Court of Federal Claims and, we reverse the jurisdictional ruling, is that you would be asking the Court of Federal Claims to say there was a breach. If there had not been a breach, we would have gotten more informative declarations from Mr. Lake and or Mr. Hawkins, and had we been able to do that, then the Track would have resulted in a certain damages award. We lost that because of the breach, the government has to pay. Well, no, not quite, because, you know, the discrimination actually occurred. I mean, this is Mr. Labatt's life. He is the poster child for the Keeps Eagle case in the sense he was running a farm in the 80s. The 80s were tough on farmers. Operational loans were made to white farmers in the same county. Let me see if I can help, because I have somewhat the same question that Judge Toronto has. Let's assume that we agree with you that there was a breach of the agreement, and that the government should have allowed its employees to sign these affidavits and submit them. The problem is, at that point, we're not sure what the claims administrator would have done, and you say the program no longer exists. Is one alternative here to reconstruct that program? My recollection is that in other court of federal claims cases where we've had a similar situation, I seem to recall one about a promotion board that we've said that the structure for the original decision making should be reconstructed, and that the claim should be submitted that way, because, I mean, it's very difficult to know, if you're the court of federal claims, how this would have come out if the government hadn't breached the agreement. So, isn't there a possibility here of reconstructing the administration process and having the claim properly submitted with affidavits from the government employees to a reconstituted administrator? Yeah, it's, I mean, I attempted to answer the question. It's a fair question. I'm doing my best to respond, and so, Mr., I was, we were very careful in the complaint to explain what Mr. Labatt, who was following the case very closely because of the importance of it to, not only for the money, but for his life, because he had lost his farm. He lost his kid to suicide because of it, and so my client was really concerned about this case he was following, and he thought he had a prototype case. So, his understanding of the settlement agreement is in the complaint. His understanding was that the government was laying down because they discriminated against this Mr. Labatt, and so the breach for Mr. Labatt obliterated his understanding of the agreement. I mentioned in the... Yeah, but I'm hypothetical. What we're saying is, hypothetically, we agree with you. Let's hypothetically say we agree with you that the government breached the agreement. The question then becomes, what's the relief that you should get as a result of that, and I think what we're suggesting to you is it becomes difficult for the Court of Federal Claims to know what the administrator would have done but for the breach, and I'm trying to explore with you ways to figure out what the relief would have been if there had been no breach. Mr., with respect to the remedy, it would have been, we had an expert report calculating the loss, and it was $202,000, and then our relief that we'd seek in District Court, or I'm sorry, Court of Federal Claims, would include, because we had a non-judicial process guaranteed to us, and Mr. Labatt thought, that's over. We have a non-judicial process. The attorney fees are rising from it because when you get an agreement with the government that it's going to lay down, that is his expectation of the bargain, that he didn't have to do much because he had actual discrimination demonstrated in his presentation to the arbiter. So his presentation to the arbiters, no question, demonstrates the discrimination, demonstrates the other similarly situated farmers who were getting the loans that he wasn't getting, and so that's it. The remedies are you get the money that he's entitled to, and then you get the attorney's fees, this whole thing, all these round and roundabout. Now, the good thing is the consequences of your decision on the important question is that the next person that this happens to, in one of these big Pigsford, Keeps Eagle cases, is that they'll know what to do. I didn't know what to do because there was no Federal Circuit opinion that I found that said what Signet-Song says, and that is that in the first instance, you bring your breach of settlement agreement claim here, then when the government says you've waived and it's final, you know it's not so. Labatt 1, the D.C. Circuit opinion. Labatt 2 then will be the road map for future plaintiffs to bring their claims that the government has breached the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing under the settlement agreement. And so here I am, I was, I didn't know what to do, and so we went on. Can I just move you on just another but related question, I think. In the case. Right. And what I'm taking jurisdiction off the table, but now you have to state a possible claim for your relief. He seems to have found in the alternative, and it doesn't matter, I don't think, whether he was correct or incorrect, because his decision, I think we would all agree, is not viewable. He concludes, first point is that the declarations came from federal officials, and that's a problem. But the second, he says, the final sentence on page 174 says further, the statements in that declaration, which were all the statements that the two people made, purporting to establish that white farmers received a benefit that you were denied, lacked the specificity necessary to establish that those benefits were, in fact, received by the white farmers. What that leads me to conclude, or to ask you to comment, is if the claims administrator, even incorrectly, because we don't get to review that, said, and based a finding in the alternative on the fact that even if I will accept those on a failure to state a claim. Justice, truth. My client had submitted a declaration which documented the discrimination, had documented in detail, and the white farmers could receive better benefits. There's a reference here on 173 to the declaration. Is that your declaration? Yes. It refers to my declaration. Yeah, okay. Is that declaration that was before the claims administrator in the joint appendix in this case? I don't recall. I think it's attached to the red brief. Okay. Supplemental appendix seven. That's your declaration. Is that the version that was before the claim? That's the declaration. Did your declaration encompass all that was said and laid out by the two witnesses here? That's the way I understood it. Yes. This declaration laid out what I discovered from Lake and Hawkins up to that point, and then there was a discontinuation because of the government instruction of cooperating with me. Just to be clear, I had come to this, I'm focusing on that same sentence, thinking that it was crucial to your argument that you say the Lake and Hawkins declarations, had there not been a breach, would have had more information in them than they did. So the insufficient specificity of what was actually given in the past to the track being neutral is not a reason to conclude that had there been no breach, you would have had no case because you could have gotten more. I thought that's what you were saying. No, that's right. And so on page SAPPX10, what Lake told Labatt and me, for example, was that these are the non-Indian farmers in the area, the white farmers, who are receiving loans in amounts that would have helped Mr. Labatt. No, I know, but that's why I said whether or not the claims... But let me understand this. When you did your allegation with respect to reliance on the settlement agreement and that provision, it deals with what the claims administrator did in this Track B analysis, right? Well, heavens no. I mean, I have a career assuaging government, and what I'm focusing on is government misconduct. I mean, in a general scheme of things, when the government settles a case... But you're saying the misconduct was what, that they didn't refuse to accept the declarations of these two people? What was the misconduct? The misconduct was that the BIA supervisors told these witnesses of my client, which the only way, because there's no appeal in this, no hearing in this process, that the only way my client could get his $202,000 was getting affidavits from these non-family witnesses, which he knew about before the settlement agreement. So when he agreed to the settlement agreement by not objecting out of the class, he knew exactly what he was doing. You're not responding to my question. Maybe I'm not being clear. He came up with the... I've understood the argument here and the claim against the government of lack of fair dealing, et cetera, to be based on the fact that he got these two declarations from these employees, and the government told them they couldn't sign those declarations. So all you have were unsigned declarations because of that provision in the settlement agreement that said employees couldn't participate. Am I wrong or right about that? And I'm sorry, I must not be communicating, but we can't look at the settlement agreement without looking at my client's mind. I mean, there's a meeting... We're not disputing the settlement agreement here. Just what... Your client got declarations from these two people, right? And then the government said you can't sign them because of the provision in the settlement agreement. Are you saying that if the government hadn't breached, we would have been able to get more information from these people? Absolutely. They're just friends. They're members of the system in Wabuntrap. They witnessed the discrimination. They're full supporters of the Keeps Eagle case. It's so obvious that they'd be supporting a tribal member regarding this. No, but what I don't understand is I thought you went to Track B and you gave the claims administrator the information you had gotten in the declarations. You included all of that information in your affidavit, right? Not all the information because they cut me and finished the declarations and it didn't happen because they got the instructions from the BIA. So these declarations that you got that were unsigned do not represent the declarations that you would have gotten in the absence of the breach? That's correct. Now, how is that? Because I thought... I don't know. I obviously misread the record, but I assumed you got these declarations and then it was a matter of signing them. And because the government told them they couldn't sign them, you had the completed declarations. What you didn't have were signed declarations. Am I wrong about that? Yeah. The D.C. Circuit, there was extensive questioning about this and they became satisfied, yes, because I didn't have subpoena power. I didn't have a power to notice a deposition. I didn't have any power. This is a paper only, no hearings, no appeal process, that I was stuck having to solicit from parties this. Now, they had made... What you're saying is, to be clear, if I understand it correctly, that if you had... if the government hadn't breached, you would have met with these people and you would have gotten more information from them and the affidavits would have been more complete. Exactly. Like Mr. Labatt's declaration himself, because of the... this was publicly known, this discrimination throughout this period, and these were tribal officials, tribal members who knew about the discrimination and they witnessed it. And so, the whole point here is that Mr. Labatt has gotten in a situation where there's an important principle that we recognize from the Sak-Nah-Singh case, and if we can just get that principle in the Federal Circuit applied here, and that is that with respect to breach of settlement claims, when the government raises waiver or finality based on the breach of the settlement agreement, then what happens is it's a substantive matter, not a jurisdictional matter. And we worked very hard to get to this position where this legal principle can be adopted by the Federal Circuit, and I just want to close with Associate Justice Louis Brandeis saying, if we don't... if we desire respect for the law, we first must make the law respectable. And so, the point here is that I know this has been really a lot of work to go through the D.C. Circuit and get to the Federal Circuit, but this is an important principle, and the government has argued against that, and so we need to make sure we get that. Okay, we'll restore a couple minutes for a couple of moments here from the government. Thank you. Good morning, Your Honor. Turning to the questions that were just... It strikes me that the government's argument that the settlement agreement precluded the suit for breach of the settlement agreement is near-privilege. Why am I not correct about that? Because the settlement agreement included the finality and waiver provisions that said that the determinations were only... I didn't say you can't sue for breach of the settlement agreement. We have dozens of cases in which that's happened, where there's been a settlement agreement and a mechanism under the agreement, and the settlement is said to be final, but if there's a breach of the settlement agreement, people can sue. Isn't that right? Normally, Your Honor, yes. Normally, that is the case. However, in the facts presented here, you have two specific issues that preclude judicial review. Where does the agreement say you can't sue for breach of the settlement agreement? The agreement includes the waiver that said that the claim determinations made are not reviewable by any court. That has nothing to do with the settlement agreement. Except that the alleged breach goes directly to... The court would have to review the substance of the determination in order to grant any sort of relief, in order to exercise jurisdiction. Both the statement... Your Honor alluded to it earlier, which is the alternative rationale of the track being neutral is, okay, putting the procedural issues aside of whether you submitted these declarations. I've looked at the merits of what the content of the declarations, and I find that it's insufficient in order to award relief. Under the terms of... With respect to these employees. Now, we're not deciding the merits of the case. We're just dealing with whether or not he said... I'm looking at what the track being neutral said, which is... If you were to have submitted the declarations properly... I know, but I understood his response to my questions in that regard, or he would have done a lot more to get more information from these declarations, if not for the fact that the government stepped in and intervened. And all of that, Your Honor, is extra record evidence that's simply the affirmance of counsel. There's nothing in the record to support that. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Not quite nothing. We have the complaint. This is on term B, in paragraph 187 on page appendix 64, talks about having presented the declarations for review, revision, and ultimately, perhaps, certainly, there could have been more said. But at the complaint stage, we really are going to conclude that getting better declarations was not part of what this complaint is saying was made impossible by the government's directive to Lake and Hawkins to stop talking to him. Because, Your Honor, the declarations that were submitted were offered as offers of proof. That's the best they could get. The question is, on the assumption that what you did was a breach, had you not breached, might they have gotten better declarations? I don't know whether they could have gotten better declarations. There's no evidence suggesting either way. This is at the complaint stage. Complaint's not evidence, Your Honor. Complaint's just an allegation. Well, we have to decide the case based on the allegation. Well, Your Honor. That's the way it is. Your Honor, they — Look, look. If the government tells an employee, you can't testify in a proceeding, that's completely improper, is it not? If it relates to something, at least, that happened before the employee became an employee of the government? Not if the — not if the agreement that's at issue here specifically precludes Federal employees from participating in this proceeding. That would be close to an obstruction of justice. If an employer told an employee, I want you to shut up, you can't testify about facts that you know in a judicial proceeding, right? In other circumstances, that could well be the case. In this circumstance, the settlement agreement specifically stated that employees of the United States could not participate in the non-judicial claims process. Yeah, but the question is whether we should read that as meaning that they can't supply relevant information. That's so unusual, so unusual, and so improper in most circumstances. Why in heaven's name should we read the agreement as doing that? Because, Your Honor, the agreement is coming out of — these are — this agreement took over — there was 10 years of discovery going up to it. Why would the parties agree to something that provided — that said that the claims administrator can't get relevant information from government employees? Because, Your Honor, this all comes — Can I just add to that? Yes. The Department of Interior's TUI regulation at 43 CFR 2.82 — what's it? C5 — which says, employees who voluntarily testify while on their own time or in approved leave status as private citizens as to facts or events that are not related to the official business of the department, that's excluded from an otherwise general rule about employees not testifying. I mean, isn't that of a piece with the kind of general background principle that Judge Dike is talking about, that a current employee testifying in his private capacity, particularly about things learned as a matter of personal knowledge before he became a federal employee, is entitled to testify? Why would we read the settlement agreement to be a — to be contrary to a governing regulation and other more general principles? Well, Your Honor, the two employees were identified as federal employees before in their draft declarations and in Mr. Cardall's declaration as well. He identified them as federal employees. He did not state, either in his declaration or before the track being neutral, that we had asked these declarants to offer testimony in their personal capacity and not in their official capacity. In fact, a fair reading of that, because it was pointed out in the — at Appendix 173 and 174, the track being neutral said, since Mr. Cardall's declaration makes clear that you obtained information in the declaration from the two federal officials named, I think that is a fair reading of that is to show that the track being neutral looked at this and said, wait a minute, this — there's a problem here. Federal employees are not even supposed to be involved in this I think it's in official capacity or there's no — there was no evidence offered or no statement made that it was in any other capacity or that it was solicited in any other capacity. Was it Laker — was Hawkins the one who was not a federal employee at the time of the events? I — I think he — I believe so, yes. So, I mean, if — if Mr. Hawkins is going to declare — file a declaration saying, here's what I knew at the time of these events, he could not possibly be testifying in his official capacity because he didn't acquire the knowledge in his official capacity. Mr. Lake may be a different story, although I'm not sure under the TUI regulation whether that would actually be different, but Mr. Hawkins, he didn't even get the knowledge while he was a federal employee. Well, I think if — if — even if this case were to be remanded, we would contest the veracity of those — those claims that — that they had that — or that they were instructed by the government to do that, but putting that aside, we would certainly challenge it. Let's assume hypothetically we conclude that a suit for breach of the settlement agreement is permissible and that, at least based on the complaint, that we conclude that the government breached the settlement agreement by not permitting the employees to sign declarations and cooperate with the plaintiff's counsel. Let's assume that. Then the question becomes, what's the remedy? And we — there are, I recall, claims court decisions where something was supposed to be submitted to a board — I recall one in particular, a promotion board case, and I believe was to reconstitute the board or, in this case, the claims process and have a decision rendered without the government breach affecting it. Is that a possibility here, that the claims process could be reconstituted for that purpose? I don't think that's a possibility, Your Honor, because the purpose of the settlement agreement was to get, A, have the government not be involved in any way in the nonjudicial claims process. That's not really an answer. I'm talking about a practical matter. I mean, is the claims administrator who ruled on these Track B claims somebody who's still around? The program is over. I believe that the program is concluded. There may still be some CyPRAE litigation going on, but the claims administrator — CyPRAE litigation? Part of the remainder of any unused funds were to be distributed. Like class action, CyPRAE. Yes. Your Honor, I don't think so without having the court literally step into the shoes of the administrator and make those determinations on its own. Well, that's the alternative, would be to have the claims court say, this is what I would have done if I were the administrator and there hadn't been a breach. I'm offering you a less drastic remedy, which would be reconstituting the claims process. I don't know of any way or circumstance in which that would be possible under the terms of this settlement agreement. I mean, the funds have been disbursed. Not under the settlement agreement, under the auspices of the claims court. In other words, trying to figure out what would have happened here if they had been able to get full information from the declarants and submitted those declarations to the claims administrator. Would the relief have been granted or not? Absent the calling in, are you suggesting that the claims administrator would be called in to testify to give some kind of advisory opinion? He would be given new declarations resulting from cooperation by the government employees, and he would decide what the relief was that would be appropriate under those circumstances, under the construct of the settlement agreement. I think that would be totally outside the bounds. That would blow the settlement agreement apart. What's your solution? Take as a given that we were hypothetically to say there was a breach of the settlement agreement, and therefore he has the right to rely on whatever declarations or whatever. And then how do we know where, I assume the government's position is, and therefore we should automatically give him the amount he's requesting. I assume you're saying, well, that just means you should reconstitute or do something. So what's your suggestion? If you don't like Judge Dyck's suggestion. Your Honor, I don't think that you can, that there's any damages that are available in the award of damages under the settlement agreement was given exclusively to the track being neutral, whose decisions weren't reviewable. This would not be an award of damages under the settlement agreement. It would be an award of damages not from the funds set aside in the settlement agreement, but from the judgment fund for the government's breach of the settlement agreement. Because you have to assume that, but for the breach, the administrator would have awarded some measure of relief. It's not a matter of assumption. It would be a matter of proof. Your Honor, then as part of the settlement process here, Mr. Labatt, he agreed to forgo both judicial review of the claims determinations, but also any challenge otherwise on these discrimination claims. He did not agree to forego any challenge to the government's breach of the settlement agreement. There's no provision in this settlement agreement that says all claims arising out of this settlement agreement, including allegations of breach of the settlement agreement, are hereby waived or shall be. There's no provision for handling breaches of the settlement agreement. The DC Circuit decided that you couldn't go back to the DDC that issued the settlement agreement because it said very specifically when you could go back. But it did not say that if the government has breached it, there is no other remedy. And the settlement agreement doesn't waive remedies for that. Your Honor, in the settlement agreement, every claimant agreed to release the government from any liability, and the government did not concede any liability for the underlying discrimination claims. The process that you're envisioning— OK, let's assume we reject that. OK, you lose. We say at the end of the day, and maybe there needs to be a hearing in the claims court, but we say there's no bar to and the government breached the settlement agreement by not allowing the collection of information from these declarants and the submission of information to the claims administrator. At that point, you have a choice. The choice is either the claims court steps into the shoes of the claims administrator and decides what the claims administrator would have done, or you reconstitute the claims process. Which of those two more appeals to you? Do you want to think about it? No, Your Honor. I don't think it could reconstitute this claims process because it's concluded. The court would have to make an assessment on its own. However, again, I think that would just be blowing apart the terms of the settlement agreement. So you're telling us there's absolutely no relief? If you accept Judge Deitch's predicate, which is we find there was a breach of the settlement agreement, and you're saying too bad because this program has already expired because this litigation has taken so long? There has to be some relief, right? I mean, you would not say, because if we conclude there's a breach of the settlement agreement, the government would not say he's automatically, therefore, entitled to this $200,000 award, right? No, no, certainly not. Because the government would say that it's up to a claims administrator or someone to make that determination. So if that person doesn't exist, what are the options? It can't be that the only option is to say, too bad, too late, we've disbanded this claims administrator proceeding, and so you can't possibly get any relief because of that. I think the court would have to require some kind of testimony from the claims administrator and get the claims administrator to issue an advisory opinion as to what its assessment would be. But to agree, the answer could not be that if we were to find the first steps, that he gets no relief simply because the claims administration process is terminated. Well, I think you have to get to the first step. Did this conduct constitute a breach in the first place? Yeah, I'm making assumptions when I'm asking you this question. Assuming that that constituted a breach, that certainly is one possibility for the trial court to do. I don't know whether it can do that within the confines of this process. But you would agree that one possibility is not to say, too late, no more claims process is in existence, and therefore, you can't get your money, even though, except the hypothetical that we've concluded, there was a breach in the settlement. I think there would have to be some evidence in the record of what the amount that the claims administrator, the board, in the first instance would have granted. And how does one go about getting that? The only thing I can think of is to do just that, to call the administrator in and ask, offer, you know, seek his testimony. But you're still not answering my question, which is, is it that it's not the government's position, is it, that because the claims administration process is no longer in effect, he should be foreclosed from getting any relief? That is not the government, that is not the government's position. So we just have to work together, folks would have to work together and figure out what the best way to proceed. Assuming that the breach was established, which we don't, that's a big assumption. I understand that. So if there's no further questions. Of course, there's another alternative, is that the government could settle and save everybody a lot of future litigation. If the government saw, yes, the government, that is always a possibility that we would, that is always under consideration. Yes, Your Honor. Are there other claims similar to this that are in the pipeline? I'm not aware of any other claims in the Court of Federal Claims similar to this. However, there were numerous challenges made in the district court by similarly situated plaintiffs who could not receive either the relief that they requested or thought that they were entitled to as part of the claims process. On the basis of the fact that their witnesses were foreclosed from testifying because they were federal employees? I don't know if it was specifically on that basis, Your Honor, no. It was, I just know that there were lots of challenges that were brought up and all of them essentially dismissed by the district court. So if there's nothing further, we ask that the decision be affirmed. Thank you, Your Honor. Just briefly to return to where I left off, how the courts adjust themselves to kind of find this respectful law, the law respecting the people and their rights. And I think that, you know, one of the reasons why a court of appeals will harmonize the law on a point like this is so people and their lawyers know what to do. And so when I was in the position with Mr. Labatt, I had the experience of being involved with the government a lot and I knew that the government instructing a witness not to testify was wrong because I had done other cases. Okay, can I interrupt your line of thought to just ask you a question before your time runs out, which is on the point we were discussing earlier about what these, in the absence of the government's breach, if we were to conclude there was a breach, what more these employees would have done? And Judge Toronto certainly pointed to one paragraph in the settlement. The other two paragraphs in the settlement, in the complaint, I'm sorry, the other two paragraphs in the complaint that I'm not sure specifically allege what the nature of the interference was. And they say because they prevented Hawkins and then the other gentlemen from testifying and providing evidence on behalf of Labatt's claim. Did that go to helping and adding to and modifying the declaration or is there something else that they, the government did to preclude their participation? Well, obviously it would have gone to the more detail with respect to the instances. As we listed, there are a lot of witnesses to these events, but they're a long time ago, 20, 30 years ago. So if I could have communicated with them more, then it would have been more detailed with respect to the discrimination, with respect to the American Indian farmers versus the white farmers, which was what the... No, no, I'm talking about these two witnesses though. I'm not just, these paragraphs are referring specifically to Mr. Lake and Mr. Hawkins. Yes, they would have, more information as I allege, because they're long time friends of Mr. Labatt. More information in the declaration before they signed it? They would have provided more information before they signed it because they were witnesses. And so this was very public. I just want to just get a nub of it. Basically, the US Department of Agriculture, this federal program, was saying that they'd only loan to people on their landed feed. So that was public, right? And that meant that Indians couldn't get the loans. So this wasn't like hidden discrimination. This was public discrimination, and everyone knew about it, and American Indians weren't happy because American Indians were not getting business loans to keep their farms going, and white farmers were. Thank you. Thank you. We thank both sides of the case. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/argument%3A36999. Public record. Not legal advice.