Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is taking a stance against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) with a lawsuit filed on behalf of the state. The legal action comes in response to demands from the USDA that Minnesota conduct in-person interviews with over 100,000 SNAP beneficiary households to verify eligibility—all within a narrow 30-day window. The USDA's command has stirred controversy, with Ellison criticizing the Trump Administration for their pressure tactics. As reported by KSTP, Ellison was quoted as saying, "It’s bad enough that the USDA has no lawful authority to impose these impossible demands on Minnesota. But once again, the Trump Administration is threatening to let the needy go hungry."
This legal scuffle surfaced when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, representing the USDA, set forth to aggressively ensure that 191,000 individuals across four counties comply with SNAP certification protocols, according to information obtained by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. Ellison asserts that the federal government's push is both misplaced and without legal grounding. Ellison also denounced what he described as the Administration's efforts to "keep vulnerable people hungry and scheming new ways to punish the states that want to keep them fed."
Ellison's lawsuit argues that these demands violate specific federal laws, including the Food and Nutrition Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The USDA's data pointed out that Minnesota's payment error rate for SNAP was significantly lower than the national average, which raises questions about the singling out of Minnesota (and Colorado) for such stringent recertification efforts. Ellison's office highlighted the implausibility of this task, stating, "Even attempting to complete this mammoth process in the timeframe provided would cause harm to county residents who need assistance with other programs or services, and pull resources from fraud-investigation programs that are better suited to protect the integrity of SNAP."
The lawsuit is not Ellison's first clash with the USDA; in past conflicts, Ellison successfully challenged the Trump administration over SNAP funding usage during a government shutdown and against demands for sensitive data from recipients. The Attorney General aims to not just invalidate the USDA's demands but also to secure a court order that would prevent the USDA from enforcing these impractical measures. Ellison seeks to halt what he calls arbitrary and capricious action by the agency that is not only unsupported but imposes undue hardships on the people of Minnesota. Indeed, the Food and Nutrition Act, according to Ellison's interpretation shared by KSTP, does not condition funding on states conforming to last-minute initiatives unveiled without notice, nor does it mandate households to partake in mass in-office interviews.
