SNAP recipients filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, trying to kill a pilot program that stops beneficiaries from spending taxpayer-funded benefits on junk foods like candy, sodas, and energy drinks.
According to the Hill, the USDA has approved 22 such restriction waivers so far, with the types of barred foods varying by state.
The five plaintiffs from Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia are represented by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ), a nonprofit focused on advancing justice for low-income families. They allege that the USDA violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), the federal law that governs how agencies create and implement regulations. They want the pilot programs declared unlawful, all approved waivers delayed, any waivers not yet in effect blocked, and any active waivers stopped.
The USDA declined to comment on the pending lawsuit and directed inquiries to the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs.
The core of the lawsuit targets what the plaintiffs describe as a blanket approach with no room for individual circumstances. The suit states:
"The food restriction waivers contain no exceptions for individual medical, nutritional, or household circumstances. Instead, the food restriction waivers place on recipients and retailers the responsibility for determining whether a particular product is a permissible SNAP purchase under each state's altered definition of 'food.'"
That framing sets up the plaintiffs' strongest card: a Tennessee mother named Amanda Johnson. The suit states that Johnson would no longer be able to purchase the foods her daughter eats once Tennessee's restrictions go into effect. The lawsuit describes Johnson's daughter as "a disabled teenager with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID)," a condition the suit says limits the girl to a narrow set of foods she can safely consume.
The lawsuit puts it starkly:
"If she is unable to eat those foods, the only alternative is nutrition through a feeding tube."
The suit also states that Johnson's physicians advised her "to provide her daughter with whatever foods she is able to eat in order to avoid nutritional deterioration and invasive medical intervention."
The Johnson family's situation is genuinely difficult. No reasonable person wants a disabled teenager on a feeding tube. But the lawsuit is not really about Amanda Johnson's daughter. It is about whether the federal government can attach nutritional conditions to a taxpayer-funded benefit program, and the answer to that question should be obvious.
SNAP is not a paycheck. It is public assistance funded by working Americans, and the idea that the government can set parameters on how those funds are spent is not radical. It is basic stewardship. The restriction waivers bar purchases of sodas, energy drinks and similar items that have no nutritional value. The fact that 22 states have already sought and received these waivers suggests broad demand for exactly this kind of reform.
The APA claim will turn on whether the USDA followed proper administrative procedures in approving the waivers. Courts will need to determine whether the agency provided adequate notice and comment periods, whether the waivers fall within USDA's statutory authority, and whether the lack of individual medical exceptions creates a procedural or substantive defect. Those are real legal questions. But the policy question underneath them is settled for most Americans who have watched their tax dollars converted into grocery carts full of Mountain Dew and Skittles for years.
The court, jurisdiction, and assigned judge have not been publicly identified. The effective date for Tennessee's restrictions has not been publicly confirmed. The names of the four other plaintiffs beyond Amanda Johnson have not been disclosed in public reporting.
If the plaintiffs seek a preliminary injunction, meaning an emergency court order to pause the waivers before a full trial, they will need to show a likelihood of success on the merits of their APA claim and demonstrate irreparable harm. The Johnson family's medical situation could supply the irreparable harm argument. Whether that is enough to halt a 22-state pilot program is another matter entirely.
A narrow medical exception for cases like ARFID would resolve the sympathetic edge of this lawsuit without gutting the program. Whether the USDA builds one in voluntarily or a court orders one remains to be seen. But the broader principle that taxpayers can demand nutritional standards for the benefits they fund is not something five plaintiffs and a nonprofit should be able to litigate away.
