Government Argues USDA Acted Reasonably in Seeking SNAP Data
The federal government wants to organize and protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipient data that it has requested from the states, it said in a court filing Friday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in case 1:25-cv-01650.
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In the case, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, SNAP recipients and other plaintiffs argue that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acted illegally when it demanded that states submit SNAP recipient data to it (See 2509150029).
“Bold assertions alone that an agency acted ‘reflexively’ and without reason are insufficient at summary judgment to win the day,” the government said of its opponents' case. “By contrast, in initiating the data gathering effort at issue in this matter, USDA actualized a Presidential directive by examining its own programs, identifying a problem with one such program, and determining a reasonable course of action to eliminate that problem.”
“Specifically, USDA made a reasonable determination that the housing of SNAP data in separate State Agencies and various EBT Processors constituted information siloing that obfuscated waste, fraud, and abuse that squanders valuable federal dollars from this critical program,” it continued. “USDA then developed an action plan by identifying statutory and regulatory authority permitting it to gather, review, and verify the relevant data” and “establishing a new system of records to house and protect that data.”
EPIC and the other plaintiffs disagreed Friday in another reply supporting summary judgment. “This data collection was a foregone conclusion, motivated solely by President Trump’s government-wide policy preference, without regard to the privacy protections Congress established in the relevant statutes,” they said. “Acting without reason, USDA trampled the important procedural protections of the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act.”