Attorney General Ellison files for emergency relief to protect almost 450k SNAP recipients
Motion for emergency injunctive relief filed in lawsuit challenging impossible USDA demand that Minnesota verify SNAP eligibility of nearly 100,000 households via in-person interviews within 30 days or lose funding
USDA demand would require an impossible 60,000 overtime hours in Hennepin County alone in a matter of weeks
December 30, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Yesterday evening, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed for emergency relief to protect Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the almost half a million Minnesotans who rely on the program to put food on the table. The filing is part of Attorney General Ellison’s December 23 lawsuit challenging the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) recent impossible and unlawful demand that, within 30 days, Minnesota interview in person roughly 100,000 households that receive SNAP benefits to verify their eligibility for the program.
The Trump administration threatened to cut off Minnesota’s SNAP administrative funding and disqualify it from SNAP altogether unless Minnesota complies with USDA's impossible demands, which under federal law it is prohibited from making. In Minnesota, roughly 440,000 people receive SNAP benefits each month, including approximately 150,000 children, 70,000 seniors, and 50,000 adults with disabilities. Attorney General Ellison filed yesterday's motion to ensure these almost half a million Minnesotans would not go hungry due to USDA’s impossible demand.
"Donald Trump’s administration is trying to take food off the tables of hungry children and families across Minnesota, all to score cheap political points,” said Attorney General Ellison. “I will not allow that, which is why I’m asking the courts to block this blatantly illegal action from the Trump administration. The people of Minnesota deserve a president who is fighting for them, rather than a president who is trying to harm them to settle political vendettas.”
Minnesota is seeking a temporary restraining order or expedited preliminary injunction that would prohibit the Trump Administration from enforcing its unlawful demand while the rest of the case is litigated.
Background
On December 16, 2025, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins sent a letter to Minnesota officials purporting to require Minnesota to “recertify” the eligibility of almost 100,000 SNAP households in Hennepin, Ramsey, Washington, and Wright Counties within 30 days from the receipt of the letter, or by January 15, 2026. She further demanded that Minnesota conduct in-person interviews with each of those households as part of the recertification process. Secretary Rollins threatened to take severe punitive actions against Minnesota if it failed to comply, including disqualifying Minnesota from SNAP.
Attorney General Ellison argues in his lawsuit that USDA’s demand violates several aspects of federal law, including the Food and Nutrition Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Executive agencies do not have authority to impose new or arbitrary conditions on states beyond what Congress originally established for the receipt of SNAP funds. In fact, the Food and Nutrition Act prohibits States from requiring “households to report en masse for an in-office interview,” and prohibits most in-home interviews as well.
Federal law also prohibits agencies from taking actions that are arbitrary and capricious. Yet USDA’s reasons for imposing the “pilot project” upon Minnesota are unsupported and irrational, and the proposed project would not remedy the recipient fraud it supposedly targets. Rather, it would instead impose new hardships on recipients, Minnesota counties, and the State of Minnesota.
The Impossibility of USDA’s Demand
In Minnesota, SNAP households are already recertified regularly. Conducting additional in-person interviews and recertifications of almost 100,000 households within 30 days would be utterly impossible, even if the Trump administration had provided advance notice and even if Minnesota and its county partners redirected all available resources to the effort.
Even attempting to complete this mammoth process in the timeframe provided would cause harm to county residents who need assistance with other programs or service — and pull resources from fraud-investigation programs that are better suited to protect the integrity of SNAP.
Hennepin County officials alone estimate that completing USDA’s request would require 60,000 hours of evening and weekend work hours from staff at a cost of $4 million in overtime expenditures. Wright County would need each of their 18 staff trained in SNAP recertification to work for 20 hours a day including holidays and weekends in order to complete USDA’s request. Ramsey County and Washington County would need to immediately triple the number of staff trained in SNAP recertification and assign them all to focus exclusively on those recertifications. All of this would also require the counties to abandon other essential and legally required government functions and services, including processing new SNAP applications, administering Medical Assistance, Housing Support, Child Care Assistance, and more.
The Integrity of Minnesota’s SNAP Program
The demand from USDA is part of an ongoing, misguided, and unlawful effort by the federal government to advance the Trump Administration’s personal and political grievances with Minnesota and its elected officials. In a separate lawsuit recently, Trump Administration officials admitted in a legal filing to the political targeting of blue states for cuts in energy grant funding.
The Trump Administration’s attempt to target SNAP in Minnesota is part of the same pattern. According to the USDA’s own data, Minnesota’s payment error rate in 2024 was two percentage points lower than the national average and lower than the error rates of 33 other states and territories. Yet USDA is targeting only Minnesota and Colorado to recertify participants in this hasty, impossible manner. Furthermore, a report produced by the Congressional Research Service in 2025 found that “SNAP fraud is rare.”
Additionally, SNAP recipients in Minnesota are already recertified, generally at 12-month intervals. USDA’s demand needlessly ignores and duplicates the work counties are already doing, all to further a political narrative and punish President Trump’s perceived enemies.
USDA’s latest action follows attempts by the Trump administration to use SNAP benefits as a weapon during the government shutdown, attempt to cut SNAP benefits from lawful residents of the United States, and make unlawful demands for SNAP recipients’ sensitive data — all of which Attorney General Ellison successfully challenged in court.
