Attorney General Ellison wins order halting Trump Administration’s push to use sensitive SNAP information for mass surveillance agenda

$1.4B to continue to flow to 400K hungry Minnesotans while AGs’ litigation to block recipients’ sensitive personal information from being used in Trump’s ‘Orwellian surveillance campaign’ continues

October 16, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison today announced he secured a preliminary injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s unprecedented demand that states turn over personal and sensitive information about millions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. Despite the Trump Administration’s claim to the contrary, this demand is likely for the purposes of immigration enforcement. Today’s preliminary injunction comes in the lawsuit that Attorney General Ellison and a coalition of 22 states filed against the Trump Administration on July 29, alleging that USDA’s demand violates multiple federal laws and the U.S. Constitution and calling the scheme an “Orwellian surveillance campaign.”

“I’m gratified the court continues to find that this outrageous and unprecedented demand for the private and sensitive information of tens of millions of Americans should not be allowed to go ahead,” Attorney General Ellison said. “I’m proud to fight for hungry Americans who just want to feed their families and fight against Donald Trump’s inhumane, mass-surveillance agenda.”

SNAP is a federally funded, state-administered program that provides 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. In an attempt to bully states into compliance, USDA has repeatedly threatened to withhold administrative funding for the program if states fail to comply with its unprecedented demand for data — effectively forcing states to choose between protecting their residents’ privacy and providing critical nutrition assistance to those in need. Minnesota receives roughly $1.4 billion a year to administer the program to over 400,000 hungry Minnesotans.

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. Even a year’s worth of SNAP recipient data contains sensitive, personal identifying information on tens of millions of individuals — including over 400,000 in Minnesota. The federal government’s stated justifications for its unprecedented data demands, to “prevent fraud and abuse,” are directly contradicted by their own findings. Attorney General Ellison and the coalition sued to block the demand and keep the funds flowing to low-income and hungry Minnesotans.

On September 18, Attorney General Ellison and the coalition won a temporary restraining order that temporarily blocked USDA from withholding the funding. The preliminary injunction that they won, which comes after a court hearing last week, now blocks the Trump administration from withholding the funding for the duration of the coalition’s litigation.

Attorneys General Ellison is joined in this lawsuit by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Kentucky.

A copy of the order is available here.