On June 26, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the state of Minnesota seeking an injunction requiring the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) agency to turn over the last five years of SNAP application data. The DOJ claims that it needs this data to ensure that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) could ensure that the state is properly administering and enforcing its determinations of residents’ eligibility for SNAP, including household benefit levels.

SNAP is a federally funded, state-administered program that provides billions of dollars in food assistance to tens of millions of low-income families across the country. SNAP applicants provide their personal information with the understanding — backed by state and federal laws — that their information will not be used for purposes unrelated to food assistance. For 60 years, states have administered SNAP alongside the federal government using robust processes that ensure only eligible individuals receive benefits. Those processes have never required states to turn over sensitive, personally identifying information about state residents.

In May 2025, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 14243 “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.” The USDA claimed that to comply with that Executive Order, it needed data from states to ensure they are properly administering and enforcing their determinations of residents’ eligibility for SNAP. Shortly after the USDA asked states to provide this data, a coalition of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging that demand. In September 2025, the District Court for the Northern District of California temporarily blocked the order to hand over SNAP data.

Despite that order, the USDA once again requested the data in May 2026, claiming that the new request conformed to the order from the district court. The DOJ argues that the state’s noncompliance creates the likelihood of ongoing material waste, fraud, and abuse going undetected. The DOJ asks the court to grant a declaratory judgment that the state of Minnesota is in violation of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 for failing to comply with the data request and an injunction ordering Minnesota to comply with the data request.