Veneman

The five plaintiffs operate family farm businesses which receive contractual payments from farm programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). Each plaintiff has at least one shareholder, member, or beneficiary who. is a delinquent debtor on an agricultural loan administered by the USDA. None of the plaintiffs is a delinquent debtor. Through administrative offset, the Secretary of Agriculture took pro-rata shares of contractual payments owed to the non-debtor plaintiffs to satisfy delinquent debts owed by the respective individual debtors. In effecting these offsets, the Secretary gave notice to the individual debtors of the intent to offset and of available administrative remedies. As a matter of policy, however, the Secretary has interpreted the regulations as not requiring such notice to be given to the non-debtor entities. The plaintiffs contend the Secretary’s no notice policy violates their constitutional rights to due process. The district court did not decide the plaintiffs’ due process claims nor determine any underlying factual issue, such as whether notice to the individuals could be imputed to the…