The Balance of Power

USDA Demands SNAP Recipient Information

Press Release:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong Joins Law­suit Chal­leng­ing Trump Admin­is­tra­tions Ille­gal Demands

Preceding Event:

On May 6, 2025, The Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA)‘s Food and Nutri­tion Ser­vice (FNS) issued a let­ter to every state. The let­ter, “cit­ing a recent exec­u­tive order titled ‘Stop­ping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Elim­i­nat­ing Infor­ma­tion Silos,’ and announc­ing that, ‘each State, dis­trict, ter­ri­to­ry, and pay­ment proces­sor is a SNAP infor­ma­tion silo’ and that ‘USDA and FNS are work­ing to elim­i­nate these infor­ma­tion Silos’,” accord­ing to the law­suit. USDA announced that it con­tact­ed the third par­ty ven­dors states use to that admin­is­ter the SNAP pay­ment sys­tem, plan­ning to cir­cum­vent the states and col­lect SNAP data direct­ly from the ven­dors.

“USDA also announced that it was ‘tak­ing steps to require all states to work through their proces­sors’ to sub­mit to FNS per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion, includ­ing ‘names, dates of birth, per­son­al address­es used, and Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers’ and total amount of ben­e­fits received for all SNAP appli­cants and recip­i­ents since Jan­u­ary 2020,” the law­suit said.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has nev­er demand­ed that states turn over per­son­al iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion on the all of their SNAP recip­i­ents, the law­suit said.

General Overview:

Accord­ing to the press release from, July 29, 2025, “Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong, as part of a coali­tion of 22 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.

In the law­suit, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong and the coali­tion argue that these demands vio­late mul­ti­ple fed­er­al pri­va­cy laws; fail to meet the pub­lic com­ment require­ments for this type of action; exceed USDA’s statu­to­ry author­i­ty; and vio­late the Spend­ing Clause. The coali­tion asks that the Dis­trict Court declare the Trump Administration’s demands unlaw­ful and block the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion from con­di­tion­ing receipt of SNAP fund­ing on states’ com­pli­ance with these demands.”

Connecticut Nexus:

Con­necti­cut has near­ly 490,000 peo­ple receiv­ing SNAP ben­e­fits. The law­suit claims there would be harm “due to the poten­tial loss of fed­er­al funds for the admin­is­tra­tion of SNAP threat­ened by USDA.” In fis­cal year 2024, the state had $157.5 mil­lion in SNAP expens­es and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment reim­bursed 50% of it.

Date of filing:

July 28, 2025

Case #:

3:25-cv-06310

Case title:

State of Cal­i­for­nia et al v. Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture et al

Plaintiffs: 21 states and D.C

Defendants:

Court:

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO DIVISION

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 28, 2025

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