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Michigan – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has returned to federal court to ask a judge to step in again to stop the Trump Administration from asking millions of people who get food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for sensitive personal information.
Nessel filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asking the court to enforce an existing preliminary injunction that had stopped the administration from making states give them private information about SNAP recipients.
Earlier this year, the court imposed the order because it thought the government demand was likely illegal and not in line with how SNAP data is supposed to be utilized under federal law.
The lawsuit says that the administration has put further pressure on states by threatening to stop giving them money for administrative purposes if they don’t give them the data they want.
Nessel and a group of other attorneys general say that this new move goes against the court’s previous order and brings up the same legal issues as the first demand.
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SNAP is a program operated by the states but paid for by the federal government. It gives billions of dollars in food help to low-income families across the country. People that apply give personal information with the promise that it will only be used to run the program.
Nessel’s office said that the government has made it clear that it plans to utilize the data for anything other than SNAP, which is against federal law.
“This troubling pattern of willfully disregarding lawful injunctions is nothing new for the Trump Administration,” Nessel said.
“My attorneys general colleagues and I will continue to keep a watchful eye to ensure that they comply with the rule of law. It is my hope that the Court swiftly rebukes this latest attempt and puts an end to this Administration’s efforts to sow chaos and confusion around one of our most important programs, while jeopardizing residents’ ability to feed their families.”
Michigan gets over $150 million a year just to administer SNAP. State officials say that even little changes in that financing might have a big impact on families who depend on the program to get the food they need. Nessel says that the administration’s threats put states in a tough spot: they have to either preserve people’s privacy or risk losing important funds.
The administration has said that their latest request is different since it contains a suggested data security protocol. Nessel’s filing, on the other hand, says that the protocol would still allow data exchange that the court has previously said is illegal.
It also says that federal officials refused to talk about the specifics of the agreement. The U.S. Department of Agriculture turned down the states’ concerns and soon threatened to cut off funding, which led to the current court case.
Nessel has often questioned the acts of the federal government that have an effect on SNAP. She sued during a prior government shutdown to make sure benefits were paid, and the courts agreed with her.
More recently, she fought against federal guidelines that wrongly limited the eligibility of some non-citizens who were legally living in the country. This led to new guidance and another court decision that kept Michigan from facing sanctions.