Kansas governor won’t send SNAP recipients’ personal info to feds. She’s getting sued
A monthslong standoff between Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and the Trump administration has escalated into a court battle over whether the federal government has a right to the personal information of low-income Kansans whose families rely on food assistance.
Attorney General Kris Kobach is suing Kelly and Department of Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard, a Kelly appointee, over their refusal to send the U.S. Department of Agriculture records on everyone who has applied for or received benefits since Jan. 1, 2020.
State records show that roughly 188,000 Kansans receive monthly benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a federal program administered by state governments.
USDA has threatened to withhold more than $10.4 million in SNAP funding from Kansas for each fiscal quarter that officials refuse to turn over personal information, including the names, dates of birth, home addresses and Social Security numbers of applicants and recipients.
“Governor Kelly has decided to put Kansas’s most vulnerable residents’ SNAP benefits at risk with a petty, politically motivated show of resistance to the Trump administration,” reads the complaint filed by the Republican attorney general in Shawnee County District Court on Sept. 8.
In a statement last week, Kelly, a Democrat, accused Kobach and Speaker of the House Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, of engaging in “low-rent political theater” by holding a press conference about the lawsuit before her office had received a copy.
“The Attorney General is known for not doing his homework or placing priority on protecting Kansans’ private data,” Kelly said. “I have always worked to protect Kansans, especially from federal overreach, and I will continue to do so.”
Why do feds want SNAP data?
In March, when Elon Musk was leading the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order designed to give the federal government unprecedented access to state-level records for SNAP and other federally funded programs. The goal, he said, was to weed out “waste, fraud and abuse”.
On May 6, USDA sent a letter to all state SNAP directors, including Howard, ordering them to turn over personal information for program participants and “records sufficient to calculate the total dollar value of SNAP benefits received by participants over time.”
A coalition of 21 Democrat-led states and Washington D.C. sued USDA in California over the data demand. In a July response letter to USDA, Howard said Kansas, which is not involved in the multi-state lawsuit, could not comply with the agency’s request.
“Due to the pending litigation, we are forced to deny the USDA’s demand for data at this time. Doing the opposite will place KDCF in a position of potential liability in the event a court finds that the USDA’s demand violates federal law,” Howard wrote.
“Moreover, as a practical matter, KDCF is unable to comply with the timing of the USDA’s demand,” Howard continued. “Producing the amount of data being requested will require significant time, manpower, and expense.”
Kansas missed a deadline in July and a revised deadline in August. A volley of letters between state and federal officials — including former Kansas state Rep. Patrick Penn, who now oversees SNAP within USDA — has failed to break the stalemate.
Hawkins, who is running to become state insurance secretary, has said there is no excuse defying the demand.
“The information the USDA is seeking is straightforward. It’s simply the qualifying information DCF must use to determine eligibility for SNAP: names, birthdays, Social Security numbers, home addresses and ‘all data records used to determine eligibility,’ including income information for those currently receiving food stamps,” Hawkins wrote in a Star opinion piece.
Could Kansas lose food assistance funding?
Kobach’s lawsuit asks the court to order Kelly and Howard to comply with USDA’s request and to issue an injunction against the further withholding of personal information.
It accuses Kelly and Howard of “effectively withdrawing from SNAP” by disregarding the agency’s threat of holding back more than $10 million in quarterly food assistance funding.
“Respondents’ refusal to comply with (USDA’s) request for SNAP data will lead to the suspension or disallowance of federal funding for Kansas’s SNAP program,” says Kobach’s filing.
According to the lawsuit, Kansas residents received approximately $402 million in SNAP benefits last fiscal year. The state averaged roughly $33.5 million in monthly benefits payouts.
It’s unclear how long the state could continue operating its food assistance program if USDA makes good on its threat to withhold funding.
A spokesperson for DCF downplayed the risk of Kansas losing out on federal money in an email response to a detailed list of questions.
“Should the federal agency impose a federal disallowance, there would still be an appeal process for the agency that would stay application of any penalty during that review process,” spokesperson Erin LaRow said.
LaRow emphasized the Kelly administration’s contention that the program would actually be in more peril if DCF complied with the federal agency’s demand. Federal and state law both define the requested data as “confidential,” she said.
“As such, DCF is only allowed to provide the data to the USDA for very specific purposes which are outlined in federal statute,” LaRow said, adding that USDA’s intended use for the requested data is “unlawful” because it doesn’t meet that criteria.
Kobach’s lawsuit says DCF is required under state law to to “cooperate with the federal government” on any federally funded program “in the field of social welfare.”
Is there SNAP fraud in Kansas?
It’s difficult to assess how many errors made in the administration of food assistance programs can be attributed to fraud or negligence.
The primary metric used to track the effectiveness of a state’s SNAP program is the payment error rate, defined as the percentage of overpayments, underpayments, and payments issued to ineligible households.
The USDA’s target error rate is 6%, but federal data shows 44 of the 53 states and territories that participate in the program miss the mark. Kansas’ error rate in fiscal year 2024 was 9.98% — below the national average of 10.93%.
“The application process for SNAP is complex, and payment accuracy errors are largely unintentional,” LaRow said.
“Sometimes, it’s simply that the client’s living situation has changed, and the client forgot to report the change.”
SNAP, she said, already has a robust quality control process designed to minimize abuse of the benefits program. DCF has its own fraud investigation unit, and after fraud findings are formally adjudicated, offenders’ names are sent to USDA to be added to a nationwide database, she said.
For a first fraud offense, SNAP clients are barred from receiving food assistance for a year. A second offense carries a two-year penalty, and a third offense constitutes a lifetime ban.
This story was originally published September 17, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
