Arizona AG sues federal government over request to share personal information of SNAP recipients

PHOENIX — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has joined a multistate lawsuit against the federal government over a request for states to share personal information of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, her office announced Monday.

The lawsuit claims that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is threatening states with funding cuts if they don’t share the information, which was requested in May.

“The Trump administration wants to use personal data as a weapon — not to fight fraud, but to intimidate vulnerable families and discourage them from seeking basic help,” Mayes said in a press release Monday. “Arizona won’t be complicit in violating privacy laws or betraying the trust of Arizonans trying to feed their families.”

The lawsuit is asking for the request to be declared unlawful.

What is SNAP?

SNAP was created in 1964 by the Food Stamp Act. The federally funded program is run by state agencies and provides billions of dollars for food assistance for families across the nation.

In Arizona, SNAP is operated by the Department of Economic Security and helps about 900,000 people afford food.

What personal information about SNAP recipients is the USDA asking for?

In May, USDA sent a letter to state agencies saying it was requesting the personal information of SNAP recipients as part of an executive order issued by President Donald Trump.

The executive order called for USDA to “take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure that the federal government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases.”

To comply with the executive order, USDA asked the state agencies to submit the names, dates of birth, personal addresses and Social Security numbers along with records that show the monetary value of SNAP benefits each recipient has received since Jan. 1, 2020.

USDA said this information would be used to verify the eligibility of SNAP recipients and make sure the program isn’t being abused.

The lawsuit alleges this violates multiple federal privacy laws, exceeds USDA’s statutory authority and violates the U.S. Constitution’s Spending Clause.

Arizona has now joined 25 multistate lawsuits against the federal government since Trump took office in January.

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