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    Black Farmers Fear Foreclosure as Debt Relief Remains Frozen

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    Lawsuits from white farmers have blocked $4 billion of pandemic aid that was allocated to Black farmers in the American Rescue Plan.WASHINGTON — For Brandon Smith, a fourth-generation cattle rancher from Texas, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that President Biden signed into law nearly a year ago was long-awaited relief.Little did he know how much longer he would have to wait.The legislation included $4 billion of debt forgiveness for Black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers, a group that has endured decades of discrimination from banks and the federal government. Mr. Smith, a Black father of four who owes about $200,000 in outstanding loans on his ranch, quickly signed and returned documents to the Agriculture Department last year, formally accepting the debt relief. He then purchased more equipment for his ranch, believing that he had been given a financial lifeline.Instead, Mr. Smith has fallen deeper into debt. Months after signing the paperwork he received a notice informing him that the federal government intended to “accelerate” foreclosure on his 46-acre property and cattle if he did not start making payments on the loans he believed had been forgiven.“I trusted the government that we had a deal, and down here at the end of the day, the rug gets pulled out from under me,” Mr. Smith, 43, said in an interview.Black farmers across the nation have yet to see any of Mr. Biden’s promised relief. While the president has pledged to pursue policies to promote racial equity and correct decades of discrimination, legal issues have complicated that goal.In May 2021, the Agriculture Department started sending letters to borrowers who were eligible to have their debt cleared, asking them to sign and return forms confirming their balances. The payments, which also are supposed to cover tax liabilities and fees associated with clearing the debt, were expected to come in phases beginning in June.But the entire initiative has been stymied amid lawsuits from white farmers and groups representing them that questioned whether the government could offer debt relief based on race.Courts in Wisconsin and Florida have issued preliminary injunctions against the initiative, siding with plaintiffs who argued that the debt relief amounted to discrimination and could therefore be illegal. A class-action lawsuit against the U.S.D.A. is proceeding in Texas this year.The Biden administration has not appealed the injunctions but a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department said it was continuing to defend the program in the courts as the cases move forward.The legal limbo has created new and unexpected financial strains for Black farmers, many of whom have been unable to make investments in their businesses given ongoing uncertainty about their debt loads. It also poses a political problem for Mr. Biden, who was propelled to power by Black voters and now must make good on promises to improve their fortunes.The law was intended to help remedy years of discrimination that nonwhite farmers have endured, including land theft and the rejection of loan applications by banks and the federal government. The program designated aid to about 15,000 borrowers who receive loans directly from the federal government or have their bank loans guaranteed by the U.S.D.A. Those eligible included farmers and ranchers who have been subject to racial or ethnic prejudice, including those who are Black, Native American, Alaskan Native, Asian American, Pacific Islander or Hispanic.After the initiative was rolled out last year, it met swift opposition.Banks were unhappy that the loans would be repaid early, depriving them of interest payments. Groups of white farmers in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Oregon and Illinois sued the Agriculture Department, arguing that offering debt relief on the basis of skin color is discriminatory, suggesting that a successful Black farmer could have his debts cleared while a struggling white farm could go out of business. America First Legal, a group led by the former Trump administration official Stephen Miller, filed a lawsuit making a similar argument in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.Last June, before the money started flowing, a federal judge in Florida blocked the program on the basis that it applied “strictly on racial grounds” irrespective of any other factor.The delays have angered the Black farmers that the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress were trying to help. They argue that the law was poorly written and that the White House is not defending it forcefully enough in court out of fear that a legal defeat could undermine other policies that are predicated on race.Those concerns became even more pronounced late last year when the government sent thousands of letters to minority farmers who were behind on their loan payments warning that they faced foreclosure. The letters were sent automatically to any borrowers who were past due on their loans, including about a third of the 15,000 socially disadvantaged farmers who applied for the debt relief, according to the Agriculture Department.Leonard Jackson, a cattle farmer in Muskogee, Okla., received such a letter despite being told by the U.S.D.A. that he did not need to make loan payments because his $235,000 in debt would be paid off by the government. The letter was jarring for Mr. Jackson, whose father, a wheat and soybean farmer, had his farm equipment foreclosed on by the government years earlier. The prospect of losing his 33 cows, house and trailer was unfathomable.“They said that they were paying off everybody’s loans and not to make payments and then they sent this,” Mr. Jackson, 55, said.The legal fight over the funds has stirred widespread confusion, with Black and other farmers stuck in the middle. This year, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives has been fielding calls from minority farmers who said their financial problems have been compounded. It has become even harder for them to get access to credit now, they say, that the fate of the debt relief is unclear.“It has definitely caused a very significant panic and a lot of distress among our members,” said Dãnia Davy, director of land retention and advocacy at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.Mr. Smith bought more equipment for his ranch when he thought aid was finally on the way. But now he’s deeper in debt.Montinique Monroe for The New York TimesThe Agriculture Department said that it was required by law to send the warnings but that the government had no intention of foreclosing on farms, citing a moratorium on such action that was put in place early last year because of the pandemic. After The New York Times inquired about the foreclosure letters, the U.S.D.A. sent borrowers who had received notices another letter late last month telling them to disregard the foreclosure threat.“We want borrowers to know the bottom line is, actions such as acceleration and foreclosure remain suspended for direct loan borrowers due to the pandemic,” Kate Waters, a department spokeswoman, said. “We remain under the moratorium, and we will continue to communicate with our borrowers so they understand their rights and understand their debt servicing options.”The more than 2,000 minority farmers who receive private loans that are guaranteed by the U.S.D.A. are not protected by the federal moratorium and could still face foreclosure. Once the moratorium ends, farmers will need to resume making their payments if the debt relief program or an alternative is not in place.Some Black farmers argue that the Agriculture Department, led by Secretary Tom Vilsack, was too slow to disburse the debt relief and allowed critics time to mount a legal assault on the law.The Biden administration has been left with few options but to let the legal process play out, which could take months or years. The White House had been hopeful that a new measure in Mr. Biden’s sweeping social policy and climate bill would ultimately provide the farmers the debt relief they have been expecting. But that bill has stalled in the Senate and is unlikely to pass in its current form.“While we continue to defend in court the relief in the American Rescue Plan, getting the broader relief provision that the House passed signed into law remains the surest and quickest way to help farmers in economic distress across the nation, including thousands and thousands of farmers of color,” Gene Sperling, the White House’s pandemic relief czar, said in a statement.For Black farmers, who have seen their ranks fall from more than a million to fewer than 40,000 in the last century amid industry consolidation and onerous loan terms, the disappointment is not surprising. John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, said that rather than hearing about more government reports on racial equity, Black farmers want to see results.“We need implementation, action and resources to farm,” Mr. Boyd said. More

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    Divorcing Couples Fight Over the Kids, the House and Now the Crypto

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    Dividing the family’s Bitcoin stash has become a major source of contention in divorce cases.The divorce dragged on for eight years, almost as long as the marriage. The wealthy San Francisco couple sparred over child support, the profits from the sale of the husband’s software company and the fate of their $3.6 million home.But the most consequential court battle between Erica and Francis deSouza concerned a bitter dispute over millions of dollars in missing Bitcoin.Mr. deSouza, a tech executive, had bought a little over 1,000 Bitcoins before he separated from his wife in 2013, and then lost nearly half the funds when a prominent cryptocurrency exchange collapsed. After three years of litigation, a San Francisco appeals court ruled in 2020 that Mr. deSouza had failed to properly disclose some elements of his cryptocurrency investments, which had exploded in value. The court ordered him to give Ms. deSouza more than $6 million of his remaining Bitcoin.In legal circles, the deSouzas’ case has become known as perhaps the first major Bitcoin divorce. Such marital disputes are increasingly common. As cryptocurrencies gain wider acceptance, the division of the family stash has turned into a major source of contention, with estranged couples trading accusations of deception and financial mismanagement.An ugly divorce tends to generate arguments about virtually everything. But the difficulty of tracking and valuing cryptocurrency, a digital asset traded on a decentralized network, is creating new headaches. In many cases, divorce lawyers said, spouses underreport their holdings, or try to hide funds in online wallets that can be difficult to get into.“Originally, it was under the mattress, and then it was the bank account in the Caymans,” said Jacqueline Newman, a divorce lawyer in New York who works with high-net-worth clients. “Now it’s crypto.”The rise of cryptocurrencies has provided a useful medium of exchange for criminals, creating new opportunities for fraud. But digital assets are not untraceable. Transactions are recorded on public ledgers called blockchains, enabling savvy analysts to follow the money.A variety of cryptocurrency hardware wallets used for storage.Joshua Bright for The New York TimesSome divorce lawyers have come to rely on a growing industry of forensic investigators, who charge tens of thousands of dollars to track the movement of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether from online exchanges to digital wallets. The investigative firm CipherBlade has worked on about 100 crypto-related divorces over the last few years, said Paul Sibenik, a forensic analyst for the company. In multiple cases, he said, he has traced more than $10 million in cryptocurrency that a husband hid from his wife.“We’re trying to make it a cleaner space,” Mr. Sibenik said. “There needs to be some degree of accountability.”In interviews, nearly a dozen lawyers and forensic investigators described divorce cases in which a spouse — usually the husband — was accused of lying about cryptocurrency transactions or hiding digital assets. None of the couples agreed to be interviewed. But some of the divorces have created paper trails that shed light on how these disputes unfold.The deSouzas married in September 2001. That same year, Mr. deSouza founded an instant-messaging company, IMlogic, that he eventually sold in a deal netting him more than $10 million, according to court records.Mr. deSouza’s cryptocurrency investments date to April 2013, when he spent time in Los Angeles with Wences Casares, an early crypto entrepreneur, who pitched him on digital assets. That month, Mr. deSouza bought about $150,000 of Bitcoin.The deSouzas separated later that year, and Mr. deSouza soon disclosed that he owned the Bitcoin. By the time the couple were ready to divide their assets in 2017, the value of that investment had ballooned to more than $21 million.But there was a catch. That December, Mr. deSouza revealed that he had left a little under half the funds in a cryptocurrency exchange, Mt. Gox, that went bankrupt in 2014, putting the money out of reach.In court filings, Ms. deSouza’s lawyers said it was “egregious” that her husband had failed to mention earlier that so much of the Bitcoin was gone, and argued that his secretive management of the investment had cost the couple millions of dollars. The lawyers also speculated that Mr. deSouza might be hoarding additional funds.“Francis has been less than forthright with his ever-changing stories,” Ms. deSouza’s lawyers claimed in one filing.No secret stash ever materialized. A spokeswoman for Mr. deSouza said he had disclosed the entirety of his cryptocurrency holdings at the beginning of the divorce. “As soon as Francis knew that the Bitcoin was caught up in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, he told his ex-wife,” the spokeswoman said. “Had the Mt. Gox bankruptcy not occurred, the division of the BTC would have been entirely uncontroversial.”Ms. deSouza declined to comment through her lawyer.But the appeals court found that Mr. deSouza, 51, who is now the chief executive of the biotech company Illumina, had violated rules of the divorce process by failing to keep his wife fully apprised of his cryptocurrency investments.He was ordered to give Ms. deSouza about half the total number of Bitcoins he had owned before the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, leaving him with 57 Bitcoins, worth roughly $2.5 million at today’s prices. Ms. deSouza’s Bitcoins are now worth more than $23 million.Not all crypto divorces involve such large sums. A few years ago, Nick Himonidis, a forensic investigator in New York, worked on a divorce case in which a woman accused her husband of underreporting his cryptocurrency holdings. With the court’s authorization, Mr. Himonidis showed up at the husband’s house and searched his laptop. He found a digital wallet, which contained roughly $700,000 of the cryptocurrency Monero.“He was like: ‘Oh, that wallet? I didn’t think I even had that,’” Mr. Himonidis recalled. “I was like, ‘Seriously, dude?’”A Guide to CryptocurrencyCard 1 of 7A glossary. More

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    Making ‘Dinobabies’ Extinct: IBM’s Push for a Younger Work Force

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    Documents released in an age-discrimination case appear to show high-level discussion about paring the ranks of older employees.In recent years, former IBM employees have accused the company of age discrimination in a variety of legal filings and press accounts, arguing that IBM sought to replace thousands of older workers with younger ones to keep pace with corporate rivals.Now it appears that top IBM executives were directly involved in discussions about the need to reduce the portion of older employees at the company, sometimes disparaging them with terms of art like “dinobabies.”A trove of previously sealed documents made public by a Federal District Court on Friday show executives discussing plans to phase out older employees and bemoaning the company’s relatively low percentage of millennials.The documents, which emerged from a lawsuit contending that IBM engaged in a yearslong effort to shift the age composition of its work force, appear to provide the first public piece of direct evidence about the role of the company’s leadership in the effort.“These filings reveal that top IBM executives were explicitly plotting with one another to oust older workers from IBM’s work force in order to make room for millennial employees,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for the plaintiff in the case.Ms. Liss-Riordan represents hundreds of former IBM employees in similar claims. She is seeking class-action status for some of the claims, though courts have yet to certify the class.Adam Pratt, an IBM spokesman, defended the company’s employment practices. “IBM never engaged in systemic age discrimination,” he said. “Employees were separated because of shifts in business conditions and demand for certain skills, not because of their age.”Mr. Pratt said that IBM hired more than 10,000 people over 50 in the United States from 2010 to 2020, and that the median age of IBM’s U.S. work force was the same in each of those years: 48. The company would not disclose how many U.S. workers it had during that period.A 2018 article by the nonprofit investigative website ProPublica documented the company’s apparent strategy of replacing older workers with younger ones and argued that it followed from the determination of Ginni Rometty, then IBM’s chief executive, to seize market share in such cutting-edge fields as cloud services, big data analytics, mobile, security and social media. According to the ProPublica article, based in part on internal planning documents, IBM believed that it needed a larger proportion of younger workers to gain traction in these areas.In 2020, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a summary of an investigation into these practices at IBM, which found that there was “top-down messaging from IBM’s highest ranks directing managers to engage in an aggressive approach to significantly reduce the head count of older workers.” But the agency did not publicly release evidence supporting its claims.The newly unsealed documents — which quote from internal company emails, and which were filed in a “statement of material facts” in the lawsuit brought by Ms. Liss-Riordan — appear to affirm those conclusions and show top IBM executives specifically emphasizing the need to thin the ranks of older workers and hire more younger ones.“We discussed the fact that our millennial population trails competitors,” says one email from a top executive at the time. “The data below is very sensitive — not to be shared — but wanted to make sure you have it. You will see that while Accenture is 72% millennial we are at 42% with a wide range and many units falling well below that average. Speaks to the need to hire early professionals.”“Early professionals” was the company’s term for a role that required little prior experience.Another email by a top executive, appearing to refer to older workers, mentions a plan to “accelerate change by inviting the ‘dinobabies’ (new species) to leave” and make them an “extinct species.”A third email refers to IBM’s “dated maternal workforce,” an apparent allusion to older women, and says: “This is what must change. They really don’t understand social or engagement. Not digital natives. A real threat for us.”Mr. Pratt, the spokesman, said that some of the language in the emails “is not consistent with the respect IBM has for its employees” and “does not reflect company practices or policies.” The statement of material facts redacts the names of the emails’ authors but indicates that they left the company in 2020.Both earlier legal filings and the newly unsealed documents contend that IBM sought to hire about 25,000 workers who typically had little experience during the 2010s. At the same time, “a comparable number of older, non-Millennial workers needed to be let go,” concluded a passage in one of the newly unsealed documents, a ruling in a private arbitration initiated by a former IBM employee.Similarly, the E.E.O.C.’s letter summarizing its investigation of IBM found that older workers made up over 85 percent of the group whom the company viewed as candidates for layoffs, though the agency did not specify what it considered “older.”The newly unsealed documents suggest that IBM sought to carry out its strategy in a variety of ways, including a policy that no “early professional hire” can be included in a mass layoff in the employee’s first 12 months at the company. “We are not making the progress we need to make demographically, and we are squandering our investment in talent acquisition and training,” an internal email states.Previously sealed documents show IBM executives bemoaning the company’s relatively low percentage of millennials.David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
    The lawsuit also argues that IBM sought to eliminate older workers by requiring them to move to a different part of the country to keep their jobs, assuming that most would decline to move. One internal email stated that the “typical relo accept rate is 8-10%,” while another said that the company would need to find work for those who accepted, suggesting that there was not a business rationale for asking employees to relocate.And while IBM employees designated for layoffs were officially allowed to apply for open jobs within the company, other evidence included in the new disclosure suggests that the company discouraged managers from actually hiring them. For example, according to the statement of material facts, managers had to request approval from corporate headquarters if they wanted to move ahead with a hire. Several of the plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit brought by Ms. Liss-Riordan appeared to have been on the receiving end of these practices. One of them, Edvin Rusis, joined IBM in 2003 and had worked as a “solution manager.” He was informed by the company in March 2018 that he would be laid off within a few months. According to his legal complaint, Mr. Rusis applied for five internal positions after learning of his forthcoming layoff but heard nothing in response to any of his applications.Mr. Pratt, the spokesman, said that the company’s efforts to shield recent hires from layoffs, as well as its approach to relocating workers, were blind to age, and that many workers designated for layoffs did secure new jobs with IBM.The ProPublica story from 2018 identified employees in similar situations, and others who were asked to relocate out of state and decided to leave the company instead.The company has faced other age discrimination claims, including a lawsuit filed in federal court in which plaintiffs accused the company of laying off large numbers of baby boomers because they were “less innovative and generally out of touch with IBM’s brand, customers and objectives.” The case was settled in 2017, according to ProPublica.In 2004, the company agreed to pay more than $300 million to settle with employees who argued that its decision in the 1990s to replace its traditional pension plan with a plan that included some features of a 401(k) constituted age discrimination.The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits discrimination against people 40 or over in hiring and employment on the basis of their age, with limited exceptions.The act also requires companies to disclose the age and positions of all people within a group or department being laid off, as well as those being kept on, before a worker waives the right to sue for age discrimination. Companies typically require such waivers before granting workers’ severance packages.But IBM stopped asking workers who received severance packages to waive their right to sue beginning in 2014, which allowed it to cease providing information about the age and positions of workers affected by a mass layoff.Instead, IBM required workers receiving a severance package to bring any discrimination claims individually in arbitration — a private justice system often preferred by corporations and other powerful defendants. Mr. Pratt said the change was made to better protect workers’ privacy.While some former employees preserved their ability to sue IBM in court by declining the severance package, many former employees accepted the package, requiring them to bring claims in arbitration. Ms. Liss-Riordan, who is running for attorney general of Massachusetts, represents employees in both situations.The particular legal matter that prompted the release of the documents in federal court was a motion by one of the plaintiffs whose late husband had signed an agreement requiring arbitration, and whose arbitration proceeding IBM then sought to block.IBM argued that the plaintiff sought to pursue the claim in arbitration after the window for doing so had passed, and that some of the evidence the plaintiff sought to introduce was confidential under the arbitration agreement. The plaintiff argued that those provisions of the arbitration agreement were unenforceable.The judge in the case, Lewis J. Liman, has yet to rule on the merits of that argument. But in January, Judge Liman ruled that documents in the case, including the statement of material facts, should be available to the public.IBM asked a federal appellate court to stay Judge Liman’s disclosure decision, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the company’s argument, and the full circuit court also declined to grant a stay. The New York Times filed an amicus brief to the circuit court arguing that the First Amendment applied to the documents in question. More

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    Supreme Court Ends Biden’s Eviction Moratorium

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    The ruling followed political and legal maneuvering by the administration to retain protections for tenants. It puts hundreds of thousands at risk of being put out of their homes.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Biden administration’s latest moratorium on evictions, ending a political and legal dispute during a public health crisis in which the administration’s shifting positions had subjected it to criticism from adversaries and allies alike.The court issued an eight-page majority opinion, an unusual move in a ruling on an application for emergency relief, where terse orders are more common. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.The decision puts hundreds of thousands of tenants at risk of losing shelter, while the administration struggles to speed the flow of billions of dollars in federal funding to people who are behind in rent because of the coronavirus pandemic and its associated economic hardship. Only about $5.1 billion of the $46.5 billion in aid had been disbursed by the end of July, according to figures released on Wednesday, as bureaucratic delays at the state and local levels snarled payouts.The majority opinion, which was unsigned, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exceeded its authority.“The C.D.C. has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination,” the opinion said. “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the C.D.C. the sweeping authority that it asserts.”Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the three dissenting justices, faulted the court for its haste during a public health crisis.“These questions call for considered decision-making, informed by full briefing and argument,” he wrote. “Their answers impact the health of millions. We should not set aside the C.D.C.’s eviction moratorium in this summary proceeding.”The majority said the issues were fully considered and straightforward. “It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant,” the opinion said. “But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue,” the opinion said, “Congress must specifically authorize it.”In dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that “the public interest is not favored by the spread of disease or a court’s second-guessing of the C.D.C.’s judgment.”The Biden administration and other moratorium proponents predicted that the decision would set off a wave of dire consequences.“As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to Covid-19,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.The ruling also renewed pressure on congressional Democrats to try to extend the freeze over the opposition of Republicans.“Tonight, the Supreme Court failed to protect the 11 million households across our country from violent eviction in the middle of a deadly global pandemic,” said Representative Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat who slept on the steps of the Capitol this month to protest the expiration of the previous moratorium. “We already know who is going to bear the brunt of this disastrous decision: Black and brown communities, and especially Black women.”But landlords, who have said the moratoriums saddled them with billions of dollars in debt, hailed the move.“The government must move past failed policies and begin to seriously address the nation’s debt tsunami, which is crippling both renters and housing providers alike,” said Bob Pinnegar, the president of the National Apartment Association, a trade association representing large landlords.It will most likely take a while for the backlog of eviction cases in many states to result in the displacement of renters. But tenant groups in the South, where fast-track evictions are common, are bracing for the worst.In recent days, Mr. Biden’s team has been mapping out strategies to deal with the likely loss of the moratorium, with a plan to focus its efforts on a handful of states — including South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Ohio — that have large backlogs of unpaid rent and few statewide protections for tenants.The administration had at first concluded that a Supreme Court ruling in June had effectively forbidden it from imposing a new moratorium after an earlier one expired at the end of July. While the administration had prevailed in that ruling by a 5-to-4 vote, one member of the majority, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, wrote that he believed the moratorium to be unlawful and that he had cast his vote to temporarily sustain it only to allow an orderly transition. He would not support a further extension without “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation),” he wrote.Congress did not act. But after political pressure from Democrats, a surge in the pandemic and new consideration of the legal issues, the administration on Aug. 3 issued the moratorium that was the subject of the new ruling.The administration’s legal maneuvering might have failed, but it bought some time for tenants threatened with eviction. In unusually candid remarks this month, President Biden said that was part of his calculus in deciding to proceed with the new moratorium, which was set to expire Oct. 3.Congress declared a moratorium on evictions at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, but it lapsed in July 2020. The C.D.C. then issued a series of its own moratoriums, saying that they were justified by the need to address the pandemic and authorized by a 1944 law. People unable to pay rent, the agency said, should not be forced to crowd in with relatives or seek refuge in homeless shelters, spreading the virus.The last moratorium — which was put in place by the C.D.C. in September and expired on July 31 after being extended several times by Congress and Mr. Biden — was effective at achieving its goal, reducing by about half the number of eviction cases that normally would have been filed since last fall, according to an analysis of filings by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.The challengers in the current case — landlords, real estate companies and trade associations led by the Alabama Association of Realtors — argued that the moratorium was not authorized by the law the agency relied on, the Public Health Service Act of 1944.That law, the challengers wrote, was concerned with quarantines and inspections to stop the spread of disease and did not bestow on the agency “the unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of communicable disease — whether eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures or vaccine mandates.”The C.D.C. responded that the moratorium was authorized by the 1944 law. Evictions would accelerate the spread of the coronavirus, the agency said, by forcing people “to move, often into close quarters in new shared housing settings with friends or family, or congregate settings such as homeless shelters.”The moratorium, the administration told the justices, was broadly similar to quarantine. “It would be strange to hold that the government may combat infection by prohibiting the tenant from leaving his home,” its brief said, “but not by prohibiting the landlord from throwing him out.”The case was complicated by congressional action in December, when lawmakers briefly extended the C.D.C.’s moratorium through the end of January in an appropriations measure. When Congress took no further action, the agency again imposed moratoriums under the 1944 law.In its Supreme Court brief, the government argued that it was significant that Congress had embraced the agency’s action, if only briefly.The central legal question in the case was whether the agency was entitled to act on its own. In June, with the earlier moratorium about to expire, the court voted 5 to 4 in favor of the administration, allowing that measure to stand.But that victory was distinctly provisional. Justice Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority, wrote that he had cast his vote reluctantly and had taken account of the then-impending expiration of the earlier moratorium.“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Because the C.D.C. plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application” that had been filed by the challengers.The other members of the court did not give reasons for their votes in the June ruling. But four of them — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — voted to lift the earlier moratorium. Taken together with Justice Kavanaugh’s statement, that distinctly suggested that a majority of the justices would not look favorably on another extension unless it came from Congress.The Biden administration initially seemed to share that understanding, urging Congress to act and saying it did not have the unilateral power to impose a further moratorium through executive action. When Congress failed to enact legislation addressing the issue, the moratorium expired.Under pressure from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats and wary of the rise of the Delta variant, the administration reversed course a few days later.The new moratorium was not identical to the earlier one, which had applied nationwide. It was instead tailored to counties where Covid-19 was strongest, a category that currently covers some 90 percent of counties in the United States.Mr. Biden was frank in discussing his reasoning, saying the new measure faced long odds but would buy tenants some time.“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” he said on Aug. 3. “But there are several key scholars who think that it may — and it’s worth the effort.”Many states and localities, including New York and California, have extended their own moratoriums, providing another layer of protection for some renters. In some places, judges, aware of the potential for large numbers of people to be put out on the street even as the pandemic intensifies again, have said they would slow-walk cases and make greater use of eviction diversion programs. More

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    Banks Fight $4 Billion Debt Relief Plan for Black Farmers

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    Lenders are pressuring the Agriculture Department to give them more money, saying quick repayments will cut into profits.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s efforts to provide $4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers is encountering stiff resistance from banks, which are complaining that the government initiative to pay off the loans of borrowers who have faced decades of financial discrimination will cut into their profits and hurt investors. More

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    Biden Administration Faces Legal Fight Over State Aid Restrictions on Tax Cuts

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    The litigation came amid growing pushback from Republican lawmakers and state officials to a provision in the relief package that the Treasury Department said was constitutional.WASHINGTON — State backlash against a restriction in the $1.9 trillion economic relief legislation that prohibits local governments from using aid money to cut taxes emerged as the Biden administration’s first major legal battle on Wednesday, as Ohio sued to block the provision and other states considered similar action.The litigation came amid growing pushback from Republican lawmakers and state officials, who say that the strings attached to the Covid relief money are a violation of state sovereignty and that imposing tax cut restrictions is an infringement on a state’s right to set its own fiscal policies.On Tuesday, 21 Republican attorneys general wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen seeking clarity on the portion of the law that prevents them from using the federal funds “to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in the net tax revenue” resulting from state tax cuts.The attorneys general called the provision “the greatest attempted invasion of state sovereignty by Congress in the history of our Republic.”But the Biden administration showed no signs of backing down, saying on Wednesday that the restriction on how states can use their federal funds is constitutional and that those governments should not use stimulus money meant to combat the coronavirus crisis to subsidize tax cuts.The fight could slow the rollout of more than $200 billion in relief funds that states are expected to receive to help cover Covid-related costs, including money for schools and infrastructure investments.States, which are expected to share $220 billion worth of stimulus funds, are anxiously awaiting guidance about whether the restrictions apply to the use of federal dollars to offset new tax cuts, or if it blocks them from cutting taxes for any reason, even if the cuts were in the works before the law passed.In a court filing on Wednesday, Dave Yost, Ohio’s attorney general, sought a preliminary injunction that would bar the federal government’s ability to enforce what he described as the “tax mandate.”“The federal government should be encouraging states to innovate and grow business, not holding vital relief funding hostage to its preferred pro-tax policies,” Mr. Yost, a Republican, said in a statement.Ohio is expected to receive $5.5 billion in federal relief funds. Mr. Yost said that states should not have to choose between accepting the money and maintaining their rights to cut taxes.But the Treasury Department said on Wednesday that if a state that took relief money cuts taxes, that state must repay the amount of lost revenue from those cuts to the federal government.“It is well established that Congress may establish reasonable conditions on how states should use federal funding that the states are provided,” said Alexandra LaManna, a Treasury spokeswoman. “Those sorts of reasonable funding conditions are used all the time — and they are constitutional.”She added that the new law “provided funds to help states manage the economic consequences of Covid-19, and gave states flexibility to use that money for pandemic relief and infrastructure investments.”.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus PackageThe stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read moreThis credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.The Treasury Department rejected the idea that the provision, which was added to the relief legislation at the last minute, was prohibiting states from cutting taxes. States are free to decline the federal funds, or they can repay the money if they are in fiscal shape to cut taxes.“The law does not say that states cannot cut taxes at all, and it does not say that if a state cut taxes, it must pay back all of the federal funding it received,” Ms. LaManna said. “It simply instructed them not to use that money to offset net revenues lost if the state chooses to cut taxes. So if a state does cut taxes without replacing that revenue in some other way, then the state must pay back to the federal government pandemic relief funds up to the amount of the lost revenue.”The amount of aid that a state will receive is tied to its jobless rate, and there are strict requirements to ensure that the money is used for purposes related to the coronavirus or to offset revenues that have been lost because of the health crisis. The Treasury Department plans to closely scrutinize how the money is spent.In their letter to Ms. Yellen, the attorneys general said that if they did not receive a formal response by March 23, they would take “appropriate additional action.”More lawsuits could soon follow. Attorney General Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia said such action would include seeking a court ruling “that the unprecedented and micromanaging provision violates the U.S. Constitution.”At a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Morrisey said he had been working on a draft of a complaint. He has been talking to other states about the mechanics of the legal challenge and where it should be filed.“There are huge legal and constitutional problems with this provision,” Mr. Morrisey said. “This may be one of the greatest attempted invasions of state sovereignty by Congress in the history of our Republic.” More

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    Justice Dept. Suit Says Facebook Discriminates Against U.S. Workers

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJustice Dept. Suit Says Facebook Discriminates Against U.S. WorkersThe complaint, which targets the company’s hiring of immigrants on temporary visas, opens a new front in Washington’s battle against Big Tech.Outside the headquarters of Facebook, which the Justice Department accused of favoring immigrants over Americans when hiring.Credit…Jason Henry for The New York TimesBy More