by Julie Martin Banks CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT — Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have been able to purchase groceries for themselves and their families over the last six decades in Connecticut thanks to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to state Department of Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves. An important element of the program is the confidentiality afforded those clients, she said
But that very confidentiality is under attack now, both Barton Reeves and Attorney General William Tong said earlier this week, prompting Tong to join 22 other states in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) demand that states turn over personal information about millions of SNAP recipients.
“Access to adequate, healthy food is a basic human right,” Barton Reeves said in a statement. “Demanding access to sensitive personal information without transparency and safeguard is alarming.”
According to the lawsuit, the demand from the USDA, which came in the form of a letter in May, threatened states with noncompliance procedures if they refused to comply. These procedures could include SNAP funding cuts.
Connecticut receives around $79 million a year ]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,” according to a statement released by Tong’s office. The information demanded included Social Security numbers and addresses, and in Connecticut, this applied to nearly 490,000 residents.
“USDA makes this demand for the stated purpose of detecting ‘overpayments and fraud.’ Instead, the move appears to be part of the federal government’s well-publicized campaign to amass enormous troves of personal and private data, including information on taxpayers and Medicaid recipients, to advance goals that have nothing to do with combating waste, fraud, or abuse in federal benefit programs,” according to the lawsuit.
Through the lawsuit, the AGs argue that the SNAP program not only provides low-income residents with the needed benefits, but also has a rigorous quality control system to prevent fraud.
The states have worked with the federal government on the SNAP program, and have made sure that together, sensitive information has been protected, according to the lawsuit.
“Because of the sensitive nature of this data and federal privacy laws protecting it, the federal government has always asked states to share only what is necessary to conduct quality control checks, such as, for example, a statistically significant sample of data,” according to the lawsuit. “Likewise, Congress has created specific systems for States to use to vet eligibility and investigate fraud, and those systems have significant privacy protections and limitations on the use of State-submitted information. Even the federal government’s own ability to access state SNAP records for inspection or audit is limited by statute.”
According to the lawsuit, SNAP helped more than 41 million people avoid food insecurity in 2024, and that more than 62 percent of its participants are in families with children, and that more than 37 percent are in families with members who are elderly or have disabilities.
The coalition of 22 states include: Connecticut, 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, and Kentucky.