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Lansing, Michigan – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined a group of 20 other attorneys general from around the country in suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over what they say is an illegal and intrusive request for private information about people who get food assistance.
The legal action is based on a recent order from the USDA that states must send extensive personal information about every applicant and recipient of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including Social Security numbers and home addresses, going back as far as five years. Critics say that this approach breaks long-standing federal privacy standards and could make people less likely to trust one of the most important safety net programs in the country.
Each month, Michigan gives out around $254 million in SNAP benefits to help about 1.4 million people. Nessel says that the USDA’s demand puts the state in a difficult situation: it can either follow the rules and risk exposing people’ private information, or refuse and risk losing access to the federal cash that keeps the program going.
The case, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, says that the USDA’s request for data is not only unlawful but also never been done before. SNAP has had rigorous guidelines for decades about how personal information can be collected and used. According to both federal and state law, this kind of information can only be shared for certain administrative reasons that are directly related to how the program works. The attorneys general say that none of these reasons apply in this case.
“This is yet another attempt by the Trump Administration to illegally use personal, sensitive data to fuel the president’s political agenda under the guise of fighting fraud and abuse,” Nessel said.
“My colleagues and I will not allow this administration to trample on constitutional protections or unlawfully exploit the SNAP program in this way. Michigan families deserve to have their personal information protected, and I will keep fighting until they receive exactly that.”
The coalition says that the USDA’s reason for doing this-stopping fraud and abuse-is not only not backed up by evidence, but it also goes against what the agency itself says about SNAP’s integrity. People have lauded the program for a long time for its strict control and low error rates.
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The lawsuit also claims that the USDA didn’t follow the right steps for public comments before issuing the directive, went beyond what the law allows, and broke the U.S. Constitution’s Spending Clause by threatening to withhold payments unless states followed the rules.
This legal challenge also comes amid broader concerns about data collection efforts under the current administration. Reports say that since President Trump took office, many government agencies have been gathering a lot of personal information from a lot of different places, like Medicaid and IRS databases. They typically don’t say what they plan to do with it.
Nessel and others are concerned that the USDA’s most recent action is part of a larger effort to give the federal government more access to private information in the name of administrative need.
Attorney General Nessel is joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Kentucky, in filing the lawsuit.
Together, they are asking the court to block the USDA from tying essential nutrition funding to what they view as an unlawful demand.