Ranchers Sue to Revamp North Dakota Beef Commission Appointment Process

By Mary Steurer

A new lawsuit filed by a group of independent North Dakota ranchers alleges that Gov. Kelly Armstrong and private associations have too much power over who serves on the North Dakota Beef Commission’s board.

The primary role of the Beef Commission is to decide how to use the money the state raises through checkoffs. Checkoffs are a small fee that ranchers pay on cattle sales. The proceeds are used for promoting beef consumption and research and education.

Beef producers pay $1 to the state and $1 to the federal government in checkoffs for each head of cattle they sell. These fees raised about $1.67 million in revenue for the Beef Commission last year, according to the commission’s 2024 annual report.

The Beef Commission’s nine-member board comprises three beef producers, one cattle feeder, one dairy farmer, one public livestock market representative and three at-large members.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Burleigh County, claims the governor and a few ag associations — the Stockmen’s Association, the Stockmen’s Association Feeder Council, the Milk Producers Association of North Dakota, and the North Dakota Livestock Marketing Association — wield virtually complete control over who ends up on the board.

The plaintiffs include the Ranchers Rights Initiative and three of its directors: Kenneth Graner, Jeremy Maher, and Michael Heaton. The Ranchers Rights Initiative describes itself as a group for independent North Dakota ranchers who don’t belong to any of the leading professional associations for cattle producers.

The complaint names the Beef Commission, state of North Dakota, Armstrong, and Attorney General Drew Wrigley as defendants.

The Beef Commission said as a state agency, it does not comment on pending litigation.

Under North Dakota’ Beef Commission Act, adopted in 2009, members of the Beef Commission’s board aren’t democratically elected but are, for the most part, nominated by private organizations and then selected by the governor, the complaint says.

When the commission needs a new cattle feeder representative, for example, the Feeder Council of the Stockmen’s Association gets to nominate at least two people. The governor then chooses who to appoint from the candidate pool, according to the lawsuit.

Anyone can submit nominations for the three at-large positions, but the governor has only ever chosen members and affiliates of the Stockmen’s Association for these seats, the plaintiffs claim.

That means in practice, independent ranchers have no representation on the board, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs say this process unconstitutionally favors association members at the expense of others in the industry.

“The government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers,” said Robby Dube, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit asks a state district court judge to find the Beef Commission Act unconstitutional and to strike it down. As an alternative, the complaint suggests that the court order that the governor cannot select new commission members based on the nominations of private associations.

Checkoffs are commonly applied to the sale of other agricultural products, who have groups of their own to decide how to spend the revenue. But the plaintiffs allege that the Beef Commission’s process for picking board members stands out as being particularly unrepresentative of its industry.

“The Beef Commission is the only North Dakota commodity checkoff group that does not use an election process,” the plaintiffs state in the complaint. “All board members of the barley, corn, dry bean, dry pea and lentil, and soybean checkoff groups are elected.”

Dube said the Beef Commission’s process for selecting board members has been controversial for decades. The North Dakota state Legislature earlier this year considered legislation to have board members elected rather than appointed, but it died in the House.

The North Dakota Beef Commission opposed the legislation. In testimony, a representative of the commission disputed the notion that the selection process for board seats is not fair.

Having the governor appoint board members “ensures balanced representation from diverse sectors of the beef industry while maintaining impartiality and strategic oversight,” the commission said in written testimony to lawmakers. The commission also argued that administering elections for board seats would be financially burdensome and could open up the commission to political polarization.

“While a couple of individuals may feel overlooked in the current system, the process works,” the commission said in the testimony.

The plaintiffs in their complaint also allege that the Beef Commission Act unfairly discriminates against beef producers who request refunds on the checkoffs they pay to the state. To be eligible for eight of the nine positions on the board, producers cannot have obtained a state checkoff refund for at least three years. The statute describes this requirement as ensuring that board members are active participants in the beef checkoff process.

Some ranchers may seek these refunds for financial reasons, or they may disagree with how the Beef Commission uses the money, Dube said.

The plaintiffs propose in their complaint that the court suspend the eligibility requirement that says board members cannot have received any state checkoff refunds for the past three years. 

The case has been assigned to South Central Judicial District Judge Jackson Lofgren. The state as of Thursday had not filed any response, but is expected to in the coming weeks, Dube said.

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