The Bingham family has farmed in Bingham County, Idaho, since 1950. Today, the demands of a state agency threaten to destroy that legacy.
Jerry Bingham was born and raised on his family’s thousand-acre farm near Blackfoot. After his father passed away, he began running the farm, eager to continue providing food for his community and further his family’s farming legacy. The Binghams farm essential crops like wheat, alfalfa, and potatoes. In July 2025, the state’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) ordered them to stop pumping water, threatening to shutter the family farm permanently. The soil dried. Crops failed. Planting became impossible. Since the DWR’s order, the Binghams have been allowed to turn on their pumps just once, in April 2026.
In Idaho, state law establishes a priority system for water rights, allowing senior users with longer-standing claims—like the Binghams’ 1950 claim—to access water before junior users. The law also requires the government to impose limits on junior users before senior users. The DWR’s July order violated that law. Rather than meeting its mitigation goals by first limiting the water rights of junior users, the DWR unilaterally ordered every water user in the Eastern Snake River Basin whose claim originated after 1900 to stop pumping water, unless they agreed to a water mitigation plan or joined a water district.
The Binghams tried to work with the DWR, presenting five proposed water mitigation strategies that would enable them to preserve their rights and their family farm. None have been accepted.
In September 2026, after over a year under a near-total prohibition on pumping water, the Binghams filed a lawsuit. Represented at no cost by Pacific Legal Foundation, they argue that the DWR violated state law by not respecting the senior priority of their water rights and thereby taking those rights in violation of the Idaho and U.S. Constitutions.
Their lawsuit seeks a return to the lawful, predictable framework Idaho farmers need to steward resources, grow food, and plan for the future.
“The case is about more than one family’s farm. It asks whether the institutions governing scarce resources will give people the certainty to invest, steward those resources responsibly, and produce an abundant future, or whether arbitrary decisions will make all three harder,” said Damien Schiff, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
Photography by Rick Wenner, Pacific Legal Foundation.
What’s At Stake?
- A thriving society depends on people being able to put natural resources to productive use.
- The Binghams have a right to the water they have used to farm their family’s land for generations.
- The Department of Water Resources must follow Idaho law; it cannot arbitrarily strip the rights of water users.
