Attorney General William Tong issued a statement following a court victory protecting the SNAP benefits of 700,000 Americans.
“This court ruling makes sure that Americans in need will not go hungry at a time of record high unemployment and food insecurity,” said Attorney General Tong. “Our lawsuit challenged the Trump Administration’s proposal to gut SNAP benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented economic strife. The court agreed this proposal was inhumane and unnecessary. This is an excellent result for Connecticut people struggling to get food on the table.”
Earlier this year, Attorney General Tong and a coalition of 15 attorneys general, sued the Trump Administration over changes to the SNAP program that would have cut SNAP benefits for 700,000 Americans by limiting states’ ability to extend benefits beyond a three-month period for unemployed adults who live in economically depressed areas.
The 1996 federal welfare reform law limited the time period that unemployed able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWD) could access SNAP benefits to three months. But the law made an exception, allowing states to request waivers of the three month time limit for regions with high unemployment. The Trump Administration’s proposed rule would have severely restricted states’ ability to request such waivers by basing waivers solely on the economic conditions in large “labor market area” groupings. Such groupings ignore local economic conditions. Under the new rule, for instance, Bridgeport SNAP recipients would be ineligible for food stamps because of low unemployment in Greenwich and Darien. In Connecticut, 363,500 people receive SNAP benefits — one out of every 10 state residents. Under the proposed rule, 25,788 of those recipients would have lost food assistance benefits.
The current pandemic and the following economic distress underscores the need to preserve SNAP food assistance. In March alone, 40 percent of American households with incomes below $40,000 lost jobs. From March 15 to May 15 of this year, 40.8 million Americans filed for unemployment and the number of Americans applying for SNAP benefits has also spiked.
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