States sue Trump administration over plan to share antipoverty program data

The Trump administration’s demand for states to provide Social Security numbers, immigration status, and other private information on low-income residents who receive cash benefits is improper and unconstitutional, a group of mostly Democratic-led states alleges in a new lawsuit.

Officials with 24 states and the District of Columbia say in the complaint that a regulatory change proposed by the U.S. Administration for Children and Families and set to take effect Aug. 11 greatly exceeds the federal government’s assigned role in overseeing the antipoverty program called TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and violates multiple privacy laws.

The change, first announced in June, will also cost states extra time and money and chill participation in a program that benefits some 2.4 million people nationwide, according to the 60-page lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in D.C. The states are calling for the court to throw out the proposed rule and ensure the confidentiality of this information.

New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport said in a statement that the regulatory change would “obliterate” existing guardrails on sensitive data and “violate the privacy of families that are just trying to make ends meet.”

“The Trump Administration has tried time and again to weaponize every aspect of government as part of their reckless immigration enforcement efforts. Now, they want to misuse a program intended to help vulnerable families and children as a tool for harassing immigrants,” Davenport said.

States have the right to “protect critically needed services for families in their time of greatest need,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a statement.

“Families turn to these programs because they’re doing everything they can to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table — these programs are a literal lifeline for struggling parents and their kids,” Rayfield said. “But the Trump Administration is trying to weaponize these emergency assistance programs, taking families’ private, personal data and using it to advance a partisan political agenda that is tearing communities apart.”

The lawsuit alleges the change is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to target immigrants by tightening the rules around various social service programs. Administration officials say they are trying to root out fraud and abuse, but critics say the new rules are designed to force out people who were born outside the U.S.

The Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. According to the lawsuit, the administration said it will share the data it obtains with other government agencies or private entities as part of its quest to verify that states are properly spending taxpayer dollars.

Nothing in the law supports the federal department’s “extravagant claims of authority and gross breach of personal privacy,” the lawsuit says.

“The sharing of such information runs afoul of a thicket of federal privacy protections,” it says.

When TANF was created as part of a federal welfare overhaul in 1996, it was purposely designed to limit the federal government’s role and give states wide control over the program’s design, operation, and information verification, according to the lawsuit. The Trump administration has insisted problems with the program require greater federal scrutiny.

The regulatory change announced in June would force states to provide additional details on participants, including Social Security numbers, country of origin, and immigration status, even though 95% of children and 85% of adults receiving benefits are U.S. citizens, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alleges that the Trump administration has not specified how they plan to keep program participants’ data safe, that the change would place a “direct and significant” cost on states, and that releasing data to the federal government would erode trust state agencies have developed with participants.