Attorney General Nessel Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trump Administration’s Illegal Demands that States Hand Over Sensitive Personal Data of SNAP Recipients

Move marks latest attempt by Trump Administration to collect unrelated, protected data to fuel mass deportation machine

LANSING – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel today, as part of a coalition of 20 attorneys general, announced a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) demand that states turn over personal and sensitive information about millions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. SNAP is a federally funded, state-administered program providing billions of dollars in food assistance to tens of millions of low-income families across the country. SNAP applicants provide their private information on the understanding, backed by long-standing state and federal laws, that their information will not be used for unrelated purposes. USDA has suggested that it could withhold administrative funding for the program if states fail to comply—effectively forcing states to choose between protecting their residents’ privacy and providing critical nutrition assistance to those in need. Michigan provides approximately $254 million in SNAP benefits per month on average, and any delay in receipt of federal funding could be catastrophic for the state and the residents who rely on SNAP to put food on the table. In a lawsuit being filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Attorney General Nessel and the coalition argue that this demand violates multiple federal privacy laws and the U.S. Constitution. 

"This is yet another attempt by the Trump Administration to illegally use personal, sensitive data to fuel the president’s political agenda under the guise of fighting fraud and abuse,” Nessel said. “My colleagues and I will not allow this administration to trample on constitutional protections or unlawfully exploit the SNAP program in this way. Michigan families deserve to have their personal information protected, and I will keep fighting until they receive exactly that.”

For sixty years, Michigan and other states have administered SNAP, which serves as an essential safety net for millions of low-income Americans by providing credits that can be used to purchase groceries for themselves and their family members. In those sixty years, the federal government and state agencies have worked together to build a robust process for ensuring that only eligible individuals receive benefits. In fact, the USDA itself has described SNAP as having “one of the most rigorous quality control systems in the federal government.” Those systems do not require, and have never required, that states turn over sensitive, personally identifying information about millions of Americans without any meaningful restrictions on how that information is used or shared with other agencies.

Yet in May 2025, USDA made an unprecedented demand that states turn over massive amounts of personal information on all SNAP applicants and recipients, including social security numbers and home addresses, dating back five years. Even a year’s worth of SNAP recipient data contains sensitive, personal identifying information on tens of millions of individuals — including approximately 1.4 million in Michigan. The federal government’s stated justifications for its unprecedented data demands, to “prevent fraud and abuse,” are directly contradicted by their own findings.

USDA’s demand is part of a coordinated effort by the federal government to collect personal information on Americans from every possible source, to be used to advance this President’s agenda. Since President Trump re-entered the White House in January, public reports indicate that federal officials are amassing huge databases of personal information on Americans and using that data for undisclosed purposes, including immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security has already obtained troves of personal information from both the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including private medical information and other personal details on Medicaid recipients, which Attorney General Nessel has already challenged in court. USDA’s attempts to collect data from states about SNAP applicants and recipients appear to be the next step in this campaign. 

USDA’s actions are unprecedented, threaten the privacy of millions of families, and ignore long-standing restrictions on the use and redisclosure of SNAP data. Federal law prohibits Michigan from disclosing personally identifying SNAP data unless strictly necessary for the administration of the program, or other limited circumstances exist. Those circumstances do not exist here. In today’s lawsuit, Attorney General Nessel and the coalition argue that these demands violate multiple federal privacy laws; fail to meet the public comment requirements for this type of action; exceed USDA’s statutory authority; and violate the Spending Clause of the Constitution. The coalition asks that the District Court declare the Trump Administration’s demands unlawful and block the Trump Administration from conditioning receipt of SNAP funding on states’ compliance with these demands.

Attorney General Nessel is joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Kentucky, in filing the lawsuit.

A copy of the suit will be available on the AGNews website once filed.

###