The Balance of Power

SNAP Immigration Eligibility Changes

Press Release:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong Sues to Block Unlaw­ful SNAP Eli­gi­bil­i­ty Guid­ance

Preceding Event:

On July 4, 2025, Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump signed the One Big Beau­ti­ful Bill Act. Among many oth­er things, the bill mod­i­fied the Food Nutri­tion Act (FNA). Sec­tion 10108 of the FNA was amend­ed to nar­row eli­gi­bil­i­ty for those eli­gi­ble to receive ben­e­fits through the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion­al Assis­tance Pro­gram (SNAP), joint­ly admin­is­tered by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) and state agen­cies.

Accord­ing to the law­suit, the bill also amend­ed sec­tion 10105 of the FNA and cre­at­ed “a set of mas­sive penal­ties tied to State error rates in issu­ing pay­ments to SNAP ben­e­fi­cia­ries.” These penal­ties require the states to pay a high­er per­cent­age of the cost of SNAP ben­e­fits depend­ing on their pay­ment error rate. While the aver­age state pay­ment error rate in fis­cal year 2024 was 10.93%, states are being pun­ished with penal­ties start­ing at 6%. Only eight states had a pay­ment error rate below 6% in the 2024 fis­cal year.

On Oct. 31, 2025, the USDA issued a memo to all state agen­cies issu­ing new guid­ance imple­ment­ing the Big Beau­ti­ful Bil­l’s amend­ments to the FNA, lim­it­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty for SNAP ben­e­fits “for cer­tain non-cit­i­zen groups, includ­ing refugees, asy­lum recip­i­ents, and oth­ers admit­ted under human­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tion pro­grams,” accord­ing to the press release. “The USDA memo, how­ev­er, incor­rect­ly assert­ed that all indi­vid­u­als who entered the coun­try through these human­i­tar­i­an path­ways would remain per­ma­nent­ly inel­i­gi­ble for SNAP, even after obtain­ing green cards and becom­ing law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dents,” the press release said.

While fed­er­al rules tra­di­tion­al­ly give states a 120 day grace peri­od to imple­ment new poli­cies, the memo stat­ed that the grace peri­od expired on Nov. 1, 2025 — one day after the guid­ance was issued. This meant the cal­cu­la­tion of pay­ment error rates — and the penal­ties that must be paid due to them — began tak­ing effect imme­di­ate­ly.

General Overview:

Accord­ing to the press release from Nov. 26, 2025, “Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong today joined 21 oth­er attor­neys gen­er­al in fil­ing a law suit to stop the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from unlaw­ful­ly cut­ting off Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram (SNAP) ben­e­fits for thou­sands of law­ful per­ma­nent res­i­dents. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong and the coali­tion are seek­ing to block new guid­ance from the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) that wrong­ly treats sev­er­al groups of legal immi­grants as inel­i­gi­ble for food assis­tance, includ­ing per­ma­nent res­i­dents who were grant­ed asy­lum or admit­ted as refugees. The attor­neys gen­er­al argue that the guid­ance con­tra­dicts fed­er­al law and could impose mas­sive finan­cial penal­ties on states, and are ask­ing the court to declare the guid­ance unlaw­ful.”

Date of filing:

Nov. 26, 2025

Case #:

6:25-cv-02186

Case title:

State of New York et al v. Rollins et al

Plaintiffs: 21 states and D.C.

Defendants:

Court:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF OREGON EUGENE DIVISION

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 26, 2025

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