The Trump administration has filed another lawsuit seeking personal information on Michiganders who receive food aid.
Roughly 1.4 million Michiganders receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
In the lawsuit filed Friday, the Trump administration says it needs SNAP data from the last five years to identify fraud and overpayments. Michigan and other states have refused to comply with the SNAP data request.
The four states named in Friday’s lawsuit have Democratic governors.
“The American people deserve a government that is transparent about how it spends their hard-earned tax dollars,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a written statement. “These four states are thwarting (U.S. Department of Agriculture) efforts to ensure that the billions of dollars in SNAP benefits they distribute every year are not lost to fraud. It’s unacceptable, suspicious, and it will not stand under this Administration.”
This is just one of several lawsuits the Trump administration has filed over SNAP data.
In the past, state officials said they were concerned about participant privacy and potential misuse of the data by federal immigration agencies.
In a separate case last fall, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that blocked the U.S Department of Agriculture’s demand for the data, ruling that the department lacked good safeguards to protect the personal information.
“By trying to illegally seize the personal data of more than a million Michigan residents, the Trump Administration attempted to force families into choosing between protecting their personal identifying information that may be shared for any purpose and eating,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel after that ruling.
