Cases
R-CALF USA, et al. v. USDA
CASE SUMMARY
New Civil Liberties Alliance challenges the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) unlawful new rule requiring electronically readable (EID) eartags for certain cattle and bison transported across state lines, rather than long-used visual tags.
In 2013, APHIS promulgated a final rule regulating traceability for interstate livestock movements, a regulation that permitted several forms of “official identification” for certain cattle and bison moving across state lines, including both visual-only and electronically readable eartags and providing producers with flexibility to choose among options. Over the past decade, the agency advanced and abandoned less formal measures for mandating radio frequency identification (RFID) eartags. In May 2024, however, APHIS issued its new rule to end the use of visual-only eartags as a form of official identification for certain cattle and bison moving between states, requiring visually readable EID eartags in their place. This illegal move was also unnecessary, as the existing Animal Disease Traceability framework is already proven effective.
The Animal Health Protection Act does not give USDA and APHIS the power to mandate EID eartags. Courts certainly do not have to defer to the agencies’ interpretation of the Act after NCLA’s recent Supreme Court victory in Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce, which overturned Chevron deference. The new rule is also arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, since the agencies fail to reasonably explain how the EID Final Rule “is necessary to prevent the introduction or dissemination of any pest or disease of livestock.” APHIS also violated the Regulatory Flexibility Act as well, failing to calculate the new rule’s true cost to producers—and consumers.
