On October 15, 2025, a federal judge issued a sweeping order that has sent ripples through state governments and the millions of Americans who rely on food assistance. The ruling, announced by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes the following day, blocks the federal government from obtaining the personal information of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients—a move that has intensified an already heated battle over privacy, federal authority, and the future of food security in the United States.
The controversy centers on a demand from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which, following a March 2025 executive order by President Donald Trump, instructed states to hand over detailed personal data on all SNAP recipients dating back to January 1, 2020. According to reporting by NPR, this included names, birth dates, home addresses, Social Security numbers, and records showing the monetary value of benefits received. The USDA framed its request as a necessary step to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the program, but critics decried it as an unprecedented invasion of privacy and a potential tool for broader federal surveillance.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes minced no words in her reaction to the judge’s order. “Donald Trump’s illegal demand that states hand over sensitive data about families who rely on food assistance is an outrageous abuse of power and I am proud to have secured a court order preventing it,” Mayes said in a statement. “My office will continue to fight to protect Arizonans’ privacy and ensure that federal agencies follow the law.”
The legal pushback began in July, when a coalition of 22 states and Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit challenging the USDA’s demand. The states argued that sharing such sensitive information would violate multiple federal privacy laws, exceed the USDA’s statutory authority, and run afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Spending Clause. Their case gained traction in August, when they filed for a stay or preliminary injunction, and culminated in the October 15 order by U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney in San Francisco.
Judge Chesney’s 25-page order sided with the states, concluding that “USDA, in demanding such data, acted in a manner contrary to law,” and that “states are likely to show the SNAP Act prohibits them from disclosing to USDA the information demanded.” The ruling reinforced a temporary restraining order issued the previous month, and, as the case continues, prevents the Trump administration from following through on threats to withhold billions of dollars in SNAP administrative funds from non-compliant states.
Yet, even as the legal battle unfolded, the impact of the USDA’s demand was already being felt. According to NPR, at least 27 states—most with Republican governors—had already complied, turning over data on millions of SNAP recipients. These states represented about 38% of the program’s total enrollment as of May 2025, with states like Nebraska submitting over 12 million lines of data and Texas and Ohio each sharing records for millions of individuals. Vermont officials told NPR they sent recipients’ names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and addresses, while Nebraska’s data included income, household size, utility costs, and child support deductions.
Some Democratic-led states, meanwhile, stood firm in their refusal. California Attorney General Rob Bonta was especially vocal after the court’s decision, declaring, “Let’s be crystal clear: The President is trying to hijack a nutrition program to fuel his mass surveillance agenda. The Trump Administration can try all it wants to strong arm states into illegally handing over data, but we know the rule of law is on our side.”
The motivations behind the USDA’s data collection efforts have been a source of intense debate. Officially, the agency claims it needs the data to verify eligibility and prevent fraud. In court filings, Shiela Corley, a USDA official, described how the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) found “several types of fraud, waste and abuse that has gone undetected before FNS obtained data of the kind that plaintiff states are withholding.” This included households receiving multiple payments, 300,000 potential instances of deceased individuals enrolled in SNAP, nearly 4,000 disqualified individuals still receiving benefits, and over 500,000 cases of “dummy” Social Security numbers.
However, state officials from California and Illinois challenged the USDA’s conclusions, arguing that the agency’s analysis lacked crucial context and that legitimate explanations likely existed for many of the flagged cases. They also raised concerns about the potential misuse of the data, particularly in light of the USDA’s decision to run SNAP recipients’ information through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE system. Originally developed to check the immigration status of foreign-born individuals, SAVE was recently expanded to verify citizenship of U.S.-born citizens and flag if Social Security records listed a person as deceased. The possibility that SNAP data could be used for broader immigration enforcement, rather than just program administration, alarmed many advocates and recipients.
Philip Rocco, a political scientist at Marquette University, told NPR that the Trump administration’s approach was “so out of line with professional norms for how federal-state relationships work, that it represents a really striking contrast to a longstanding pattern of relationship between federal and state agencies.” In the past, the federal government had audited and sampled state data without centralizing applicants’ personal information. Federal law, Rocco noted, strictly limits the use of SNAP recipients’ data to purposes directly related to program administration, with only narrow exceptions.
The stakes are high for the nearly 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP each month. In Arizona alone, the program—created in 1964 by the Food Stamp Act and run by the Department of Economic Security—helps about 900,000 people put food on the table. The recent tax and spending bill signed by President Trump in July 2025 prescribes deep cuts to SNAP and tightens eligibility requirements, adding to the anxiety already felt by many recipients.
For those on the receiving end of SNAP benefits, the data sharing controversy has stoked fears and mistrust. One Vermont resident, speaking to NPR on condition of anonymity, described feeling “let down” that her governor had agreed to share her data. “I’ve never not been living in fear of the system supporting me because there have already been such huge penalties for making mistakes,” she said. “It’s not about preventing waste, no way. Because we’re pennies to the dollar.”
As the legal case proceeds, the nation remains divided over the proper balance between fighting fraud and protecting privacy. With billions of dollars and the well-being of millions at stake, the outcome of this battle will shape not only the SNAP program, but also the broader relationship between states, the federal government, and the people they serve.
The court’s order has, for now, drawn a clear line in the sand, but the debate over data, privacy, and food security is far from over.
