Attorney General Tong Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trump Administration’s Illegal Demands That States Hand Over Sensitive Personal Data of Snap Recipients

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07/29/2025

Attorney General Tong Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trump Administration’s Illegal Demands That States Hand Over Sensitive Personal Data of Snap Recipients

(Hartford, CT) — 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.

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, 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. USDA has suggested that it could withhold administrative funding for the program if states fail to comply—effectively forcing states to choose between protecting their residents’ privacy and providing critical nutrition assistance to those in need. Connecticut receives roughly $79 million a year in order to administer the program, and any delay in that funding could be catastrophic for the state and the residents who rely on SNAP to put food on the table. In a lawsuit filed today in the Northern District of California, Attorney General Tong and the coalition argue that this demand violates multiple federal privacy laws and the U.S. Constitution.

“The USDA’s actions are an unprecedented, illegal threat to the privacy of families here in Connecticut and across the country,” said Attorney General Tong. “By law, Connecticut cannot disclose personally identifying SNAP data unless under very specific and strict circumstances. In this instance, none of those limited circumstances exist. No one knows why this data is being collected, who would be allowed to see it, or if it would even be stored correctly. This is simply yet another attempted illegal power grab by this administration and we will not bow down to these baseless and reckless demands.”

"Access to adequate, healthy food is a basic human right," said Department of Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves. “SNAP is a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of Connecticut households. For decades, we’ve administered this program with care, integrity, and respect for the confidentiality of our clients. Demanding access to sensitive personal information without transparency and safeguard is alarming.”

For sixty years, Connecticut and other 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. In those sixty years, the federal government and state agencies have worked together to build a robust process for ensuring that only eligible individuals receive benefits. In fact, the USDA itself has described SNAP as having “one of the most rigorous quality control systems in the federal government.” Those systems do not, and have never, required that states 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 2025, 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 nearly 490,000 in Connecticut. The federal government’s stated justifications for its unprecedented data demands, to “prevent fraud and abuse,” are directly contradicted by its own findings.

USDA’s demand is part of a coordinated effort by the federal government to collect personal information on Americans from every possible source, to be used to advance this President’s agenda. Since President Trump re-entered the White House in January, public reports indicate that federal officials are amassing huge databases of personal information on Americans and using that data for undisclosed purposes, including immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security has already obtained troves of personal information from both the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including private medical information and other personal details on Medicaid recipients, which Connecticut has already challenged in court. USDA’s attempts to collect data from states about SNAP applicants and recipients appear to be the next step in this campaign.

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.

Attorney General Tong joins the attorneys general of California, New York, Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the State of Kentucky in filing the lawsuit.

The full lawsuit can be read here.

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