By Kimberly Black
Stress on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) continued into December after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would begin withholding federal administrative funds from states that refuse to provide five years of personally identifiable information (PII) on SNAP applicants and participants.
As of late December, there had been no confirmed federal action cutting SNAP funds in any state, including Colorado. For Colorado, the threatened administrative funding totals $96 million per year.
The initial demand for data came at the end of July 2025.
The requested information includes Social Security numbers, home addresses and five years of records for millions of Americans. Rollins has said it is needed to “root out fraud.”
Colorado, along with 21 other states and the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit in federal district court in California arguing the demand violates the Privacy Act and other federal protections.
The court granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the data request.
Despite the injunction, the USDA sent a new letter in November 2025 instructing the same states to provide full data sets.
On Dec. 2, 2025 Rollins said the agency would withhold SNAP administrative funds from states that do not comply—what Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center called “an extraordinary and legally questionable escalation.” The following day, a USDA spokesperson said states must receive a formal warning before administrative funds can be pulled and that no such warning had yet been issued.
States argue the USDA’s demand forces an illegal choice: protect residents’ privacy or risk food assistance for people who depend on SNAP.
They say the agency’s actions violate federal privacy laws, exceed USDA authority and improperly condition funding on compliance.
“The USDA itself has described SNAP as having one of the most rigorous quality control systems in the federal government,” a press release from Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office states. “Those systems do not, 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.”
The release says that even one year of SNAP recipient data includes sensitive information on tens of millions of individuals, including nearly 615,000 Coloradans.
Meanwhile, Colorado also joined a separate November lawsuit after the USDA issued guidance cutting SNAP eligibility for some lawful permanent residents who entered the U.S. as refugees or asylum seekers, a move states say violated federal law and the agency’s own grace-period rules.
Both cases remain unresolved in federal court.