The federal government wants Kentucky to hand over years of records on people who applied for or received food assistance.
The request reaches back to January 1, 2020, and covers SNAP household members statewide. It includes names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, immigration-status information, income and assets, EBT card numbers, sanctions and disqualifications, and other eligibility information.
Kentucky has refused. The Justice Department has sued the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services and Secretary Steven Stack to force compliance.
But no court has ordered Kentucky to turn over the disputed records. USDA’s latest request has not been held lawful or unlawful, and Kentucky’s refusal has not been ruled unlawful.
That unresolved question is the story.
USDA has federal authority to oversee SNAP, a federal program administered in Kentucky by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The dispute is over how far that authority reaches and what protections must govern federal access to a large collection of sensitive information held by the Commonwealth.
Those protections matter because government power over data is not limited to obtaining it. Power also comes from deciding who can see the information, how it can be used, where it can go, how long it can be kept, and what happens if the rules are broken.
USDA changed its request. Kentucky still said no.
Federal law gives USDA access to state SNAP records for program inspection and audit. The same law also restricts the use and disclosure of SNAP information.
USDA says comprehensive state data are needed for program integrity, audits, and identifying improper payments. Earlier federal court rulings did not hold that USDA lacks authority to obtain state SNAP records altogether.
They did, however, constrain USDA’s first two attempts.
In February, a federal judge in California found that states challenging the request had not acted unreasonably in rejecting data-sharing protocols that could allow disclosures inconsistent with federal privacy protections.
USDA responded with a new request on May 15.
The revised protocol limits access primarily to designated USDA personnel while preserving the authority of the department’s inspector general. It requires encryption and access logging, sets breach-notification procedures and limits retention to three years. It also says federal law does not authorize disclosure of the records to the Department of Homeland Security for civil immigration enforcement.
Those changes are substantial. The dispute cannot fairly be described as though USDA simply repeated the same demand after losing in court.
Kentucky still refused.
The Commonwealth joined a May 22 multistate response arguing that the revised request had not resolved the states’ statutory and privacy concerns. The coalition described the underlying demand as materially similar to earlier requests that courts had restrained and argued that the 21-day production deadline would be unreasonable for some states with complex data systems.
Because Kentucky joined a coalition response rather than issuing its own provision-by-provision technical analysis, those specific objections belong to the group of states and should not all be treated as uniquely Kentucky’s.
The scale of the request makes the dispute more than an argument between agencies. A July snapshot from Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office reported more than 272,000 Kentucky households receiving SNAP, including 227,605 children and 92,446 seniors. USDA’s request reaches farther: it covers applicants as well as recipients and records dating back more than six years.
Kentucky officials are on both sides
The case has also opened a split inside Kentucky government.
Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration joined the May 22 refusal through the governor’s office. Coleman has taken the opposite litigation position, entering the federal case as an amicus — someone who is not a party to the lawsuit but asks the court to consider an argument.
So Kentucky officials are publicly divided over the same question now before the court: what level of federal access does the law permit, and when is the Commonwealth justified in resisting?
The Justice Department sued Kentucky on June 26 under a separate provision of the SNAP law that allows the federal government to seek court enforcement. It later asked for a preliminary injunction that could require Kentucky to comply while the case continues.
The federal court in Kentucky stayed that request on July 17.
On August 24, the Cabinet and Stack asked the court to stay the entire Kentucky case while related litigation continues in California. As of the August 27 docket review, that request remained pending.
For now, the legal posture is straightforward: Kentucky is not under an order to produce the records. USDA’s revised protocol has not been upheld or rejected on the merits. Neither USDA nor Kentucky has yet won the central legal argument.
The dispute is also not currently cutting off SNAP benefits in Kentucky. USDA has represented in the litigation that the latest data request carries no current threat to withhold SNAP funding.
Nor does this case establish a widespread SNAP fraud problem in Kentucky.
USDA reported a 4.70% payment-error rate for Kentucky for federal fiscal year 2025. That figure includes both overpayments and underpayments. It measures payment accuracy, not fraud. Kentucky also did not provide the data used in USDA’s preliminary national analysis, so that analysis does not establish a Kentucky-specific anomaly.
The safeguards are part of the exercise of power
The strongest reason to scrutinize USDA’s demand is not speculation about what federal officials might someday do with Kentucky’s records. It is what federal possession of the records would actually allow — and what enforceable rules would limit that power.
USDA’s revised safeguards deserve to be judged on their terms, not dismissed as meaningless because courts restrained earlier versions. Kentucky’s objections deserve the same treatment. General federal oversight authority does not, by itself, answer whether the particular rules governing access, retention, use, and disclosure satisfy the law.
The record does not show the institutional checks around that power disappearing. It shows them operating.
Congress imposed privacy restrictions on SNAP information. States challenged USDA’s earlier protocols. Federal courts constrained those approaches. USDA rewrote its safeguards. Kentucky remained able to reject the revised demand. When it did, the Justice Department had to ask a court to compel compliance.
That is an important democratic safeguard. Government can have considerable administrative power without the final word on its limits.
The court’s eventual ruling could define those limits for Kentucky. If USDA prevails, the decision could establish the conditions under which the federal government may require the Commonwealth to transfer this broad collection of benefits data. If Kentucky prevails, it could establish that USDA’s revised safeguards still are not sufficient to make this particular demand enforceable.
Until then, Kentuckians have concrete questions to put to both governments.
Federal officials should explain who would be allowed to access Kentucky’s records, what uses and disclosures would be forbidden, how compliance would be audited, what information about access would be available to the public and what protections would apply after a breach.
Kentucky officials owe answers, too. Beshear’s administration is resisting the demand. Coleman is arguing the other side. Both should be able to explain what federal access they believe the law permits and what safeguards they believe Kentuckians should expect before this information changes hands.
The next important development may be a ruling on Kentucky’s August 24 request to put the case on hold. The court could later revive the Justice Department’s request for a preliminary injunction or reach the larger question of whether Kentucky must comply.
Whatever comes next, the dispute is about the rules that govern public power once one government asks another to hand over sensitive information about the people it serves — and whether those rules are strong enough to be tested before the data change hands.
Sources
Food and Nutrition Act — 7 U.S.C. § 2020
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/2020
Northern District of California — October 15, 2025 preliminary-injunction order
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3%3A2025cv06310/453513/106
Northern District of California — February 26, 2026 order
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3%3A2025cv06310/453513/134
Northern District of California — August 20, 2026 order
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3%3A2025cv06310/453513/199
U.S. Department of Justice — June 26, 2026 lawsuit announcement
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-states-failing-provide-snap-data-us-department-agriculture
Eastern District of Kentucky docket — United States v. Kentucky CHFS, No. 3:26-cv-51
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/kentucky/kyedce/3:2026cv00051/112802
Kentucky Attorney General — July 29, 2026 amicus filing
https://www.ag.ky.gov/Press%20Release%20Attachments/2026-07-29%20COK%20Amicus.pdf
Kentucky Attorney General — public statement and Kentucky SNAP participation figures
https://www.kentucky.gov/Pages/Activity-stream.aspx?n=AttorneyGeneral&prId=1963
USDA — SNAP payment-error information
https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/snap/qc/per
USDA — FY2025 SNAP payment-error table
https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-qcfy25-per.pdf