Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is suing Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Department of Children and Families Secretary Laura Howard to force them to turn over data requested by the federal government.
Kelly and Howard have repeatedly refused to turn over enrollment data on the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” to the United States Department of Agriculture, citing “privacy concerns.”
The information the USDA is seeking is the qualifying information DCF must use to determine eligibility for SNAP — names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and “all data records used to determine eligibility,” including income information for those currently receiving food stamps. The Kansas SNAP program provides approximately $417 million in benefits annually and feeds about 188,000 people a month, including around 86,000 children.
On Aug 20, USDA warned that failure to turn over the requested data will result in a loss of more than $10.4 million in federal funding for each quarter Kansas is out of compliance.
“It’s ironic that the Governor would join a lawsuit to get a hypothetical amount of money for new grants for things like DEI and food justice, but she’s willing to sacrifice $10.4 million for Kansas’s most vulnerable citizens that the state will definitely lose immediately if she doesn’t supply information to the federal government,” Kobach said at a press conference on Sept. 8, 2025.
The money the USDA is threatening to withhold is calculated as the amount of overpayment Kansas appears to have made in 2024.
WIBW in Topeka reported that DCF announced in July that it would not comply with the request, as it included the release of sensitive personal information that goes beyond the scope of the benefits program. The agency reiterated that decision again in August. Several other states are currently fighting the request in federal court for that reason.
In a letter earlier this month, Republican U.S. Representatives Tracy Mann and Ron Estes sent a letter to Kelly expressing concern at the continuing failure to hand over the data to the federal agency that funds the program.
“We are writing to you today to express our deep concern with your administration’s refusal to protect the integrity of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Kansans deserve and expect their tax dollars to be managed properly, not wasted on fraudulent and incorrect payments,” the letter reads. “Your administration’s hostility towards working with federal partners to correct this error rate is unacceptable.”
Estes and Mann said the most recent USDA data showed Kansas had an error rate of nearly 10 percent in 2024.
“A subsequent investigation by the Kansas House Select Committee on Government Oversight found the error rate in spring 2025 to be almost twelve percent,’ the letter reads. “These numbers represent millions of dollars of Kansans’ hard-earned tax dollars being incorrectly sent to fraudsters or other ineligible people, including those who entered the country illegally. Every dollar wasted and stolen from SNAP is money taken from Kansans truly in need. Your administration should be eager to correct these long-standing issues in operating SNAP, but instead, you continue to double down on refusing to do so.”
Kobach: Kansas law requires release of SNAP data
Kobach said Kansas law mandates that the Kansas Department of Children and Families and Secretary Laura Howard cooperate with the federal government, including sharing SNAP data with the USDA’s food and nutrition services.
Indeed, in the complaint, Kobach said Kelly ” has decided to put Kansas’s most vulnerable residents’ SNAP benefits at risk with a petty, politically motivated show of resistance to the Trump administration. The Governor’s baseless and performative act violates state and federal law and the Constitution of Kansas. It will result in the imminent termination of federal SNAP funding and it hurts the residents of Kansas who can least afford it.”
Kobach noted the applicability of USDA’s Food Nutrition Service regulations.
“FNS regulations allow for the suspension and disallowance of a state’s administrative expenses reimbursement when FNS determines that a state’s administration of SNAP is ‘inefficient or ineffective,’ such as when a state ‘fails to comply with the SNAP requirements [in statute], the regulations pursuant to the Act, or the FNS-approved State Plan of Operation.”
FNS may then “proceed to suspension of disallowance of funds if a state files to respond to the deficiencies cited in a formal warning within 30 days.”
Kansas has been so warned.
Kansas Speaker of the House Dan Hawkins, who attended the press conference, agreed with Kobach.
“The actions of Gov. Kelly and Secretary Howard are truly shocking. For years, they’ve made repeated SNAP payments in error, using taxpayer dollars to make those payments to those who are not eligible for the program,” Hawkins said. “And now, rather than simply turn over information to the USDA, the Governor is stonewalling. She is risking millions of federal dollars that puts food on the tables of Kansas’ most vulnerable families. When the Secretary refuses to provide the data, she is not only dodging accountability but also breaking the law. Kansans deserve better.”
In a release, Kelly (quite ironically, one might say) accused Kobach and Hawkins of “low-rent political theater,” and said Kobach was “known for not doing his homework or placing priority on protecting Kansans’ private data.”
According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, DCF Secretary Laura Howard said compiling the requested data would be a “significant burden,” and takes months and more than $100,000 to compile.
Why it would take so long — and cost so much — to compile data DCF presumably already has is unclear, as is why turning over social security numbers to the government that issues them would compromise Kansans’ privacy.