Attorney General Brown joins lawsuit challenging Trump administration’s illegal demands that states hand over sensitive personal data of SNAP recipients

SEATTLE — Attorney General Nick Brown today, as part of a coalition of 21 states, filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) demand that states turn over personal and sensitive information about millions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients.

This lawsuit is separate from a state lawsuit Brown filed on July 24 in Thurston County Superior Court against Fidelity Information Services for breaching its contract to deliver SNAP benefits payments.

SNAP is a federally funded, state-administered program providing billions of dollars in food assistance to tens of millions of low-income families across the country. SNAP applicants provide their private information on the understanding, backed by long-standing state and federal laws, that their information will not be used for unrelated purposes. However, USDA has suggested that it could withhold administrative funding for the program if states fail to comply with its demands. Washington state receives roughly $129.5 million a year to administer the program, and any delay in that funding could be catastrophic for the state and the residents who rely on SNAP for food.

“The Trump administration’s illegal and cruel action threatens the privacy and well-being of our communities,” Brown said. “Our office will take action to protect Washingtonians from yet more overreach by the Trump administration.”

For 60 years, states have administered SNAP, which serves as an essential safety net for millions of low-income Americans by providing credits that can be used to purchase groceries for themselves and their family members. The federal government and state agencies have worked together to build a robust process for ensuring that only eligible individuals receive benefits. USDA described SNAP as having “one of the most rigorous quality control systems in the federal government.” Those systems have never required states to turn over sensitive, personally identifying information about millions of Americans without any meaningful restrictions on how that information is used or shared with other agencies.

Yet in May, USDA made an unprecedented demand that states turn over massive amounts of personal information on all SNAP applicants and recipients, including social security numbers and home addresses, dating back five years. Even a year’s worth of SNAP recipient data contains sensitive, personal identifying information on tens of millions of individuals — including over 1.2 million in Washington state. The federal government’s stated justifications for its unprecedented data demands, to “prevent fraud and abuse,” are directly contradicted by their own findings.

In today’s lawsuit, the coalition argues that the federal government’s demands violate multiple federal privacy laws, fail to meet the public comment requirements, exceed USDA’s statutory authority, and violate the U.S. Constitution. The coalition asks the court to declare the Trump administration’s demands unlawful and block the federal government from conditioning receipt of SNAP funding on states’ compliance with its demands.

Joining Brown in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, as well as the governor of Kentucky.

A copy of the lawsuit is available here. 

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