California, New York and 19 other attorneys general unite to stop federal attempt to force states to give five years of personal data from SNAP applicants
California – California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a federal lawsuit against what he says is an illegal and intrusive action by the Trump Administration. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has demanded states to hand up years’ worth of sensitive information on millions of Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This is at the center of the legal battle.
Bonta, together with New York Attorney General Letitia James and a group of 19 other attorneys general, says that the USDA’s mandate breaks privacy rules and goes too far under the Constitution. The case, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, wants to block the federal government from making states give over personal information like Social Security numbers and home addresses in order to get SNAP benefits.
The federal government pays for SNAP, which is an important safety net for low-income families, but the states run it. California gets about $1 billion a year to run the program. The lawsuit says that the USDA’s new data requests could affect that funding, which could mean that millions of Californians could lose access to food aid.
The battle started in May 2025, when the USDA told states that they had to keep complete data on all SNAP applicants and recipients for the past five years. Bonta and his colleagues say that this requirement is not only new, but also not needed. Federal audits have always said that SNAP’s oversight systems are some of the strictest in the federal system.
The team of attorneys general says that the federal agency is ignoring long-standing laws that protect the privacy of people who receive public benefits. Both state and federal laws limit how SNAP data can be used and shared. Most of the time, it can only be utilized for direct program management. Critics of the USDA’s order think this is part of a larger effort by the federal government to collect a lot of personal information, which makes them be concerned that the data could be used for political or immigration-related purposes.
The coalition’s lawsuit also says that the USDA didn’t get enough public feedback before giving the order and went beyond what it was allowed to do by federal law. It also goes against the Trump Administration’s attempt to use money as leverage to get information from state agencies, which may be against the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The case has support from attorneys general in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, and a few more states, in addition to California and New York. The group is asking the court to stop the USDA from carrying out its order and to keep the information of millions of Americans who rely on food assistance programs private.
