When a 23-year veteran of Michigan’s government caught employees stealing from a program, she reported it to the state’s top law enforcement office.
Then the state health department fired her, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported.
“In or around early 2024, Plaintiff reported concerns to the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Michigan regarding fraudulent activity by State employees who were allegedly conspiring to unlawfully receive public benefits, including food assistance," the lawsuit said.
In June, Pres. Donald Trump’s administration asked states to hand over five years of data of people who have received public benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that feeds around 41 million people.
“The generosity of the American taxpayer has long been abused by faulty interpretations of 1996 welfare reform law,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins said in a July statement. “Today’s notice makes clear its intent—illegal aliens should not receive government dollars. This effort is one of many by the Department of Agriculture to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse of USDA’s programs and policies.”
Rollins has targeted minimizing fraud, waste, and abuse under Trump’s Executive Order 14243, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.”
The SNAP program is federally funded but administered by the states. SNAP fraud in Michigan increased by nearly 400% in 2024. It mailed over 269,000 replacement Bridge cards.
On July 28, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and a coalition of 21 attorneys general sued over the USDA’s data request.
Every month, Michigan loads $254 million in SNAP benefits onto thousands of cards that 1.4 Michiganders swipe at grocery stores, farmers markets, and convenience stores.
The coalition argued that this demand violates multiple federal privacy laws and the U.S. Constitution.
Nessel is joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as Kentucky, in filing the lawsuit.
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