Lawsuit challenges USDA demand for food stamp data as some states prepare to comply

By Jude Joffe-Block, Stephen Fowler

A new lawsuit filed Thursday says the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s demand for sensitive data about millions of food assistance recipients violates federal privacy laws. Meanwhile some states are preparing to comply with the unprecedented request which could be used to achieve Trump administration priorities, such as immigration enforcement.

In new guidance issued earlier this month, the USDA told states they must turn over data to the agency, through their third-party payment processors, “including but not limited to” names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and addresses of all applicants and recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, going back more than five years. More than 40 million people rely on the assistance each month.

The guidance warns failure to make the data available “may trigger noncompliance procedures,” which can mean legal action and withholding funds.

SNAP recipients, including some college students who are enrolled in the program, along with a privacy group and a national hunger group, sued in federal court in Washington, D.C. and are asking a federal judge to halt the data collection until the agency complies with protocols outlined in federal law.

The plaintiffs say that the USDA isn’t following proper procedures for this kind of data collection effort, which include offering public notice, seeking public comment and publishing a privacy impact assessment ahead of time. For example, the Privacy Act requires a specific published notice, known as a Systems of Record Notice.

The USDA declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Earlier this month, an unnamed spokesperson using a USDA press email account told NPR the intent of the data sharing guidance “was to remove the data silos” and to uphold President Trump’s March 20 executive order titled, ‘Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.’ The executive order calls for “unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding” including from “third-party databases.”

The same email said the agency’s office of general counsel “is determining if this new data sharing guidance falls under an existing published System of Records Notice or if it requires its own published notice.”

“All personally identifiable information will comply with all privacy laws and regulations and will follow responsible data handling requirements,” the email said.

The Trump administration is aggressively collecting data

The legal fight over SNAP data comes the same day as Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a massive bill that includes deep cuts to SNAP. The ad-hoc Department of Government Efficiency is also merging data from across the federal government for purposes that include immigration enforcement and identifying fraud. DOGE’s data collection efforts have been contested in several legal cases.

“This case is part of a pattern that we’re seeing from the Trump administration of agencies reaching out and grabbing the personal data of Americans,” said Madeline Wiseman, counsel at the National Student Legal Defense Network, which is representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit along with attorneys from Protect Democracy, Electronic Privacy Information Center and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.

“We have no idea what the government’s up to – who’s going to have access to this data, for what purposes, and whether USDA is going to keep it internal or whether USDA is going to share it with other federal agencies for other purposes,” said Wiseman.

Privacy experts warn that there would be huge implications if federal agencies are able to ignore privacy protections and compel states and private contractors to turn over sensitive data currently held only by states, as that could allow the federal government to create powerful surveillance tools.

A former USDA official who worked in the agency’s Food and Nutrition Service, which administers SNAP, underscored the unprecedented nature of the government’s request.

“FNS has never had a nationwide list of everyone receiving SNAP benefits, let alone detailed personal information like their address or income,” said the former official who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak with the media at their current job.

The official said during the Biden administration, the agency “intentionally designed its computer systems to not collect or store personally-identifiable information about people participating in nutrition programs, like SNAP and WIC, considering it too big of a risk to participant privacy and data security.”

Responses vary by state

While some states have indicated they are weighing the legality of USDA’s data demand, other states with Republican governors told NPR they intend to comply.

Iowa is “working with our vendor to meet the request of the federal government,” Alex Murphy, director of communications for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in an email.

Ohio is “in the process of complying with the request,” Ohio Department of Job and Family Services spokesperson Tom Betti wrote in an email. “It is a substantial amount of data and will take some time to compile.” Betti added the data will be shared through Ohio’s EBT payment processor, Conduent.

The Alaska Beacon reported that Alaska Department of Health spokesperson Alex Huseman said the state “is complying with the federal government’s requirement to share the information as requested.” Huseman has not shared the same statement with NPR.

Luke Elzinga, the board chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, told NPR that hunger advocates are already overwhelmed by proposed cuts to SNAP at a time when food pantries are facing historic demands in the state, and are now also concerned about the implications of the state sharing SNAP recipients’ sensitive data.

“We’re really worried that this could be used to target immigrant families,” Elzinga told NPR. He said state agencies have worked hard to help immigrant households that are eligible for SNAP benefits feel confident in applying, but this new guidance will change that.

While immigrants who lack legal status in the country are not eligible to receive SNAP and only some categories of legal immigrants qualify, parents can enroll their U.S. citizen children regardless of their own immigration status. The Trump administration has revoked legal protections for certain categories of immigrants, such as some groups with Temporary Protected Status. That means some SNAP recipients will become subject to deportation so having access to information about those recipients’ addresses could be useful for federal authorities.

“If you’re trying to design a public benefits program that supports the most vulnerable people and makes sure that nobody in our country goes hungry, this is obviously not the way to do it,” said Ami Fields-Meyer, a senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University specializing in the intersection between civil liberties and technology, and a former senior policy advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.

“But if you’re trying to integrate critical assistance into a machinery for hunting immigrants and breaking up families and deporting people without due process – this is exactly how you do it.”

States and their vendors keep sensitive data on many federally-funded programs and benefits, such as for Unemployment Insurance, Medicaid, and special education. The attorneys behind the lawsuit warn the USDA’s demand for SNAP data could set a dangerous precedent.

States could become “the new battleground in the fight against DOGE’s oversteps into the lives of Americans,” said Nicole Schneidman, a technology policy strategist at Protect Democracy and one of the attorneys involved in the suit. “This demand puts states in a no-win situation where they must break the law and betray their citizens or risk losing essential funding.”

After Maryland’s payment processor, Conduent, informed the state’s Department of Human Services about the USDA’s request for SNAP data, the state agency sent a letter to its vendors, grantees, contractors and community partners asking them to forward any federal requests for data they might receive.

The letter says any personally identifiable information and protected health information, “should be kept confidential and not shared, disclosed or accessed, except in accordance with the contract and applicable law.”