A federal courtroom in San Francisco has drawn a line in the sand for the Trump administration’s latest effort to obtain detailed personal data from states administering food assistance.
Maxine Chesney, a judge of the U.S. District Court, issued a preliminary injunction preventing the U.S. Department of Agriculture from withholding administrative funds from 22 Democrat-led states that refused to hand over sensitive information about recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The ruling stops the agency from conditioning funding on compliance with recent federal demands for extensive recipient data — including names, home addresses and immigration status. The states argued that the threat of funding cuts amounted to coercion, especially given an earlier order that had already shielded their SNAP funding from similar action.
The food assistance initiative at the center of the dispute — Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — supports roughly 42 million low-income Americans. While the program is federally financed, it is run by individual states, creating a delicate balance between national oversight and state-level control.
Federal officials had insisted the data was necessary to combat waste, fraud and abuse, saying new security protocols would safeguard the information. But the court was unconvinced. In her order, Chesney signaled that the agency’s approach clashed with the statutory framework governing SNAP and raised concerns about whether recipient data could be shared beyond authorized channels.
The standoff has split the country along political lines. According to federal correspondence from late last year, 28 states — largely Republican-led — have already complied with the USDA’s data request. Others, including California, New York and Arizona, chose to challenge it in court.
Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, welcomed the decision, describing it as a safeguard for millions of vulnerable residents and immigrant communities whose information was at stake.
For now, the injunction preserves the status quo: states can continue administering food assistance without surrendering the personal data the federal government sought. Whether the administration presses forward with an appeal may determine how far Washington can go in reshaping oversight of one of the nation’s largest anti-hunger programs.
