Attorney General Dan Rayfield today, as part of a coalition of 20 attorneys general, filed 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.
“For many families, SNAP is the difference between having groceries on the table and going without,” said Attorney General Dan Rayfield. “Forcing states to hand over years of sensitive personal information puts those same families at risk. Oregonians shouldn’t have to give up their privacy to put food on the table.”
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. For sixty years, Oregon 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, 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. Oregon is similarly situated to other states threatened by USDA’s actions. While undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible to receive SNAP benefits, immigrants who have citizen children may and often do seek benefits on their children’s behalf. The data requested by USDA would, if improperly shared, permit federal immigration authorities to apprehend the identities and locations of such individuals.
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. Health and Human Services Agency, including private medical information and other personal details on Medicaid recipients, which Oregon 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.
In today’s lawsuit, Attorney General Rayfield 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. 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.
In filing this lawsuit, Attorney General Rayfield joins the attorneys general of California, New York, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Kentucky.
