The Department of Justice filed four separate federal lawsuits on June 26, 2026, against Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota, seeking court orders compelling each state's SNAP agency to provide five years of program applicant data to the U.S. Department of Agriculture [1]. The suits, filed by the DOJ Civil Division and the National Fraud Enforcement Division, represent a significant escalation of a data dispute that has persisted for more than a year [1].
The federal government's position is that SNAP agencies in participating states are legally obligated to furnish applicant and recipient data upon USDA request under the terms governing the program [1]. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were identified in connection with the enforcement push, alongside Civil Division Acting Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate and National Fraud Enforcement Division Deputy Director Colin McDonald [1]. The DOJ stated that data already provided by compliant states has revealed billions of dollars annually in SNAP overpayments and fraud, which it offered as justification for compelling the remaining holdouts [1][2].
All four defendant states had mounted their own legal challenge in 2025, filing preemptive suits against the federal government on the grounds that the USDA's data demands violated both federal and state privacy law [3]. A federal judge issued a partial ruling in the states' favor in February 2026, a development the states cited in their continued refusal to comply [3]. That prior ruling creates a direct legal tension with the new DOJ enforcement suits, and the courts will need to reconcile conflicting signals across the overlapping dockets [2][3].
The four suits are now pending in federal district courts, and the states are expected to raise their February 2026 partial ruling as a defense against the injunction requests [2]. The litigation sets up a significant test of federal authority over state-administered benefit programs, and of the limits privacy statutes place on federal data collection in the context of fraud enforcement. A ruling compelling disclosure could reshape how USDA conducts oversight across all 50 states; a ruling sustaining the states' privacy arguments would constrain the administration's broader data-gathering strategy for benefit programs [1][3].